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Docuseries
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román' On Netflix, About An Acclaimed Spanish Chef Who Was Convicted Of A Grisly Murder
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Black Twitter: A People's History' On Hulu, A Docuseries About How Black Culture Used Twitter To Its Benefit
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Hollywood Con Queen' On Apple TV+, A Docuseries About A Scammer Who Impersonates Female Hollywood Executives
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'F1 Academy' Docuseries From Reese Witherspoon Picked Up By Netflix
Rise of Empires: Ottoman is yet another Netflix original docuseries that seeks to spice up history with lavish dramatic reenactments, sexy visuals, and over-the-top battle sequences. Like the Roman Empire trilogy and last year’s orgy-filled The Last Czars, Rise of Empires: Ottoman plays a little fast and loose with historical fact, but delivers enough fireworks to keep you watching. While the latter Netflix series were noteworthy for their NSFW sex scenes, Rise of Empires: Ottoman keeps things just about PG-13. Nevertheless, the series goes all out, balls to the wall, when it comes to medieval battle sequences. All told, Rise of Empires: Ottoman manages to show a steamy, bloody, and human side of a major turning point in world history: Mehmed II’s seize on Constantinople.
If you’ve never heard of Mehmed II, aka Mehmed the Conquerer, he’s considered a major figure in Turkish history. Upon becoming Sultan of the Ottoman Empire at the age of 19, Mehmed set his sights on conquering Constantinople. This would obliterate the Byzantine Empire, which had flourished there after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and establish the Ottomans as the key power in the region for centuries to come.
Rise of Empires: Ottoman flits between bombastic battle scenes — those cannons, those explosions, those fire arrows! — intimate scenes between characters, and narration from historians to help us understand just how incredible Mehmed II’s actions truly were at the time. He was assuming command of an empire as a young man and daring to expand his kingdom’s own power like never before. Rise of Empires: Ottoman also focuses on one of Mehmed’s key rivals at the time, the Genoise fighter Giovanni Giustiniani, with utter respect. Giustiniani was one of the key holdouts in Constantinople, and Rise of Empires: Ottoman depicts him as a charismatic leader and sensitive lover to a young woman named Therma Sphrantzes.
Although the scope of Rise of Empires: Ottoman is limited — we don’t really delve too deep into harem politics, Mehmed’s later rule, his rumored homosexuality, or even that time Mehmed tussled for years in Wallachia with Vlad III (the literal Count Dracula) — it’s nevertheless a decent enough primer to a chapter of world history many Americans are sadly unaware of. If Rise of Empires: Ottoman gets you googling Ottoman history, reading up on Mehmed vs. Dracula, or even seeking out some great Turkish dramas, then it’s a win. At the very least, it’s a fluffy docuseries narrated by Tywin Lannister himself, Charles Dance.
