When the viral trend of was sweeping TikTok and other social media platforms in 2023, it was clearly a mistake that no one posed the question to actor Tom Hiddleston. Hiddleston apparently thinks about the Roman Empire so often that he has now produced and hosted an entire three-episode National Geographic docu-series about it.
Early in the first episode of , which airs on from 23 July, Hiddleston recounts his formative visit to the preserved remains of the ancient Roman city in 1998 when he was a teenager, showcasing some charming photos of his younger self on the kind of trip where others might spend their time drinking and partying. Instead, Hiddleston says that his experience at Pompeii shaped him so profoundly that it led him to study classics and Latin at university, and even to his decision to become an actor.
While Hiddleston consults multiple scholars in Out of Time, the show plays up his abilities as a performer to provide insights into the people who lived in the towns that were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. 鈥淚 need to combine the historical evidence with what I do as an actor,鈥� Hiddleston says, with all the solemnity of someone who takes his craft very, very seriously.
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Hiddleston鈥檚 unabashed cheesiness is what makes the show work, though. Before introducing his first expert, he touts revolutionary new technology that allows for the tracking of actual residents of Pompeii, only for it turn out to be a simple spreadsheet created by classics professor Steven L. Tuck. Hiddleston then conjures up the special effects that turn Tuck鈥檚 data into a three-dimensional holograph, noting cheekily, 鈥淚鈥檝e seen some Avengers 尘辞惫颈别蝉.鈥�
Hiddleston鈥檚 experience playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to inform Out of Time, which counts former Marvel Studios executive Kevin R. Wright among its producers. Hiddleston channels Loki with a little gesture of his thumb and forefinger, deployed multiple times throughout the series to pause or rewind moments when incorporating new information. Out of Time mixes narration and interviews with dramatic re-enactments, and Hiddleston often appears right alongside the actors playing ancient Romans, like Loki traveling through time to witness historical events.
Those dramatisations feature better acting than typical historical recreations, and they鈥檙e more grounded than director Paul W.S. Anderson鈥檚 bombastic 2014 action movie , the most recent high-profile pop-culture take on this topic. Director Tom Barbor-Might and the show鈥檚 writers create the emotional engagement that Hiddleston is aiming for when he picks out three specific real-life people to focus on: teenage blacksmith鈥檚 apprentice Avianius (Frankie Treadaway), wealthy businesswoman Julia Felix (Lubna Azabal), and a retired soldier known only as the Praetorian (Barry Aird).
Initially, Hiddleston teases the idea that this approach will lead to new revelations about what actually happened, but of course that鈥檚 no truer than anything Loki the trickster god has ever said. Still, that doesn鈥檛 make Out of Time any less entertaining or informative, especially for viewers who don鈥檛 think about the Roman Empire as frequently as those men on TikTok. Utilising expertise from historians, archaeologists, geoscientists and one 鈥渄isaster psychologist鈥�, Out of Time lays out the scientific and cultural contexts of the events in Pompeii, moving through the eruption timeline via its three subjects.
Hiddleston does a lot of pensive staring into the middle distance (sometimes with tears just slightly welling up in his eyes), and his clearly scripted banter with the experts occasionally sounds a bit stilted. It鈥檚 hard not to laugh when he first unveils his corkboard full of pinned documents and notecards with lines drawn between them, like he鈥檚 conducting a murder investigation in a police procedural. It鈥檚 even sillier when Hiddleston鈥檚 鈥渙ffice鈥� shakes and buckles with the rumblings of the earthquakes in Pompeii, thousands of years earlier.
But Hiddleston also demonstrates genuine, infectious enthusiasm for the subject, and that goes a long way in a documentary like this. If he has to make the occasional Marvel reference to get people鈥檚 attention, that鈥檚 a small price to pay.
