You might have been recommended a series called Thermae Romae Novae, if you've watched any of the other shows on the internet recently. Is this a series about a guy from ancient Rome taking a bath? The Roman is a bath architect who gets transported to modern-day Japanese baths in this series. A lot. That is it. Thermae Novae rules.
This is not an odd premise for an 11-episode TV series. It is so specific, goofy, and potentially off-putting that it feels like a minor miracle. One problem that needs to be solved is that one bath has a natural hot spring but its water is too hot, while another is visited by foreigners who don't understand Roman bathing. The way to solve these problems is by falling into a Roman bath or body of water, emerging in modern-day Japan, and getting inspired by the various wonders he sees there. He tries to make an equivalent of what he saw using ancient means when he returns to Rome.
I don't know who Thermae Romae Novae is for. The only historical information it gives is how Roman baths worked. The series seems to be a celebration of the wonders of modern-day bath technology. In addition to traditional baths and hot springs, this includes personal baths, bidets, water park slides, spa towns, and more.
Are they enjoying themselves from the fish-out-of-water scenario? In seeing a guy from the past sit down on a massage chair and assume that there must be slaves inside, what does that say about him? Is it possible that an inflatable dolphin toy is for young children to practice riding a horse in a safe environment where a bath would break their fall? Or his amazement at the delicious taste of a post-soak fruit milk? It's a pleasure for Japanese people to see their love of baths reflected in a foreign culture.
Thermae Romae Novae is so wonderful to me because of how weird it is. The episodes are not weird at all, at least once you have accepted that Lucius is going to inexplicably get teleported 2,000 years in the future and halfway around the globe each time. The premise and how it can be stretched out through 11 different episodes about different bath issues is bizarre. Even though it has a time-traveling element, it is banal.
This is one of the things that the media permit to be done, and it allows creators to make highly specific series that seem to have no broad appeal, and give them a chance to make them broadly appealing on their own. Skydivers can find a series about skydiving. A teenage girl who wants to learn the art of rakugo, a centuries-old type of solo performance comedy, is the focus of a new Manga series called Akane-Banashi. A high school club sets out to make a short film. A man is trying to become the best editor of a new dictionary in The Great Passage. I repeat: a dictionary.
There are overarching plots that evolve over time in those series. A bartender is a man who helps his customers solve their problems by making them each the perfect cocktail for their unique circumstances. An ex-yakuza uses his criminal experience to deal with household chores in The Way of the Househusband. Saint Young Men is a place where Jesus and Buddha share an apartment in Japan and deal with different aspects of modern life. One problem, one chapter or episode.
I'm trying to think of any medium that would be as bold as this one is. The emperor Hadrian and his wife Livia are dissatisfied with their husband working all the time, but they hardly matter. Roman baths, Japanese baths, bath-adjacent problems, bath adjacent solutions are all about baths. The people of the Roman empire need a bath to accept the next emperor-to-be. He succeeds.
The structure of each episode is the same, but the creativity in the premise is astounding. Thermae Romae Novae is a simple delight if you place yourself in the middle of a diagram of ancient Rome, modern-day Japan, and bath technology. It doesn't wear out its welcome at only 11 episodes.
If you have a streaming service, why not watch it? No worries if not. It was made for me, not you.
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