Barbarians

Netflix’s Barbarians is a gritty historical drama that revisits the Roman Empire’s collision with the Germanic tribes, centred on the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. It is mud-soaked, blunt, and refreshingly uninterested in polished heroics. The series leans hard into cultural tension, identity, and betrayal, with Arminius caught between Roman discipline and tribal loyalty. As a historian, I appreciate how the show treats warfare as chaotic and personal rather than glorious. Roman steel meets forest-born resistance, and the outcome feels earned rather than staged for spectacle.