Executive producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert are no strangers to cheerfully cheesy, pectorals-intensive entertainment, and Spartacus won't win any awards for the originality of its premise. Hunktacular warrior dude loves his superhot wife, but is reluctantly called away to battle for the good of his people. Hunktacular warrior dude is betrayed by sleaze-weasel Roman general and branded a deserter. Hunktacular warrior dude escapes and is reunited with his superhot wife just in time for them to be captured (notably, while in the altogether) by sleaze-weasel Roman general. Sleaze-weasel Roman general sells hunktacular warrior dude into the employ of agreeably amoral gladiator owner. Hunktacular warrior dude must wage a muscly, well-oiled, tiny-pantsed struggle up the ranks of the gladiator circuit to find his beloved wife and gain his whoa that guy just took a giant axe to the face! 

Also, gratuitous buckets of CGI blood spray, because, well, Frank Miller. (I'm waiting for the scene where someone gets a tiny paper cut, and the screen is covered by a sudden, composited-in fountain of crimson.)

Spartacus takes the censor-free liberty of pay cable and runs with it, and I'm not just talking about the copious, amusingly over-the-top amounts of limb-hacking and head-severing on display. Somewhere beyond "racy," beyond "risque," past "explicit" and even "Cinemax around 2 a.m.," there is the hallowed land known as "porntacular," and this is where Spartacus has, ahem, planted its flag. 

Before the first episode is even finished, you've become so inundated with jiggling ladybits that they seem no more exciting than the average hour of C-SPAN. By the time a gladiator's junk is on full and prolonged -- I was going to say "extended," but that carries a wholly unintended set of connotations-- display in episode two, you're more interested in the exposition he's delivering. The Romans, man; I guess they really liked their nudity. Fans of Lucy Lawless will at least be very, very pleased to see wonders they only dreamed of in the days of Xena: Warrior Princess. 

Still, the acting's surprisingly not-bad. As the title character -- Spartacus is his nom du guerre, and we haven't yet learned his real name -- Andy Whitfield repeatedly demonstrates that he can act with something other than his washboard abs. (OK, seriously, get your minds out of the gutter.) He won't win Emmys or anything, but he sells his pride, anger, and single-minded determination quite convincingly. John Hannah, always fun to watch, is typically great as Batiatus, the hustling, cash-strapped empressario who hopes to profit from Spartacus's talent for improvised amputations. And Lawless, as his wife and business partner, Lucretia, is in the same wonderfully slinky and devious form here that she showcased on Battlestar Galactica. 

Among the supporting cast, the standout is the magnetic Peter Mensah as Doctore, the ex-gladiator charged with whipping his musclebound troops into shape for arena combat. If he looks familiar, it's a testament to the sheer, shameless unoriginality of Raimi and friends. Mensah appeared in 300 as the messenger who receives a helpful geographic reminder from Gerard Butler, followed by a swift kick down a bottomless pit. He has more to do here, and does it quite well; then again, I've only seen bits of 300, so maybe he gave the most convincing falling-into-a-pit performance ever captured on film.

Yes, there's more than a little to snicker at about this show, even in the fleeting moments when everyone onscreen is actually wearing clothes. But Spartacus has a secret weapon under its toga (Out of the gutter! Seriously! Right now!) in the person of creator and head writer Steven S. DeKnight. A veteran of Joss Whedon's ever-growing legions, and also unfortunately Smallville, DeKnight knows that everyone and their aged grandmother has seen Gladiator and 300 by now. And he uses that knowledge against us, cleverly upending our expectations of how this sort of story is supposed to go.

In the climactic battle of the first episode, Spartacus singlehandedly fillets four gladiators in the arena. Case closed: Our hero is an invincible badass, and thus begins his march to glory, right? Wrong. We promptly learn that he actually dispatched four ill-trained mooks. Against real fighters with training in one-on-one combat tactics, he's a particularly beefcake-y flavor of lunch meat. 

By episode three, impatient to earn his new master's favor (in hopes that it'll speed the search for his wife), he schemes his way successfully into a title bout against his biggest rival, Crixus, an undefeated braggart with a nasty disposition. Surely, our hero -- I was going to say "comes out on top," but the sheer weight of double entendre would have made the entire sentence collapse -- emerges victorious, right? 

Nope. Spartacus gets his well-toned ass handed to him, disgraces himself by surrendering, and ends the episode absolutely and utterly screwed, from the looks of it. Even more intriguingly, every mistake he makes just keeps making life worse and worse for the people around him -- he's alienating the few friends he has among the gladiators, and leaving Batiatus even poorer for his troubles, and in increasingly worse favor with the powerful officials whose support he desperately needs. Spartacus is noble, honest, and dedicated to his wife, and we want him to succeed. Which makes watching him screw up massively kinda fascinating, and truly suspenseful.

This unexpected depth doesn't stop at the hero, either. Crixus may be all macho swagger around Spartacus -- and, oh yes, boffing the living daylights out of Lawless's character, albeit reluctantly. But he turns to fumbly-phrased mush around a servant girl who's captured his heart, in startlingly sweet fashion. Varro, Spartacus's pal, is fighting to pay his debts and return to his own beloved wife. Knowing that makes the scene in which his masters force him to, um, rather forcefully acquaint himself with a random female slave, simply for the amusement of their party guests, unexpectedly poignant.

And I'll give DeKnight and his writers credit where it's due -- they seem to have done their homework on daily life in ancient Rome, and they mine some terrific culture shock out of the things the Romans took for granted. (You will not believe the sort of, uh, deeply personal household tasks slaves are obliged to perform.)

If ugly-bumping and limb-removing are supposed to be the main selling points of this show, DeKnight, Raimi, Tapert and co. have utterly failed at their apparent mission. The smart, capable, pleasantly surprising writing is the real draw here, and I have to admit that it's got me hooked. For all its blood, guts, boobs, and blatant unoriginality, this show's not half as dumb as it looks.