This Sunday night at 9 p.m., while some polite backstabbing will no doubt be taking place on Wisteria Lane, one of the most brutal knifings in history will be depicted on the season finale of “Rome.” At last the HBO series intersects with the Shakespearean telling of the Julius Caesar story, with bloody and amazing results. This final episode, “The Kalends of February,” sets up an epic cliffhanger with the fate of the world in the balance – and elevates “Rome” to the top rank of HBO dramas.

We expect more from HBO; so when the premium cable channel delivered the first few lackluster episodes of “Rome” last August, the audience’s disappointment was palpable. Despite an engaging premise (the focus on the swashbuckling duo Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo) and some graphic sexuality, there wasn’t enough weight to it all. It seemed forced and stilted, and critics (including this one) seemed to give up on the enterprise almost immediately. By the sixth episode, I started seeing hope, but it wasn’t until this Sunday night’s episode that I fully comprehended the potential for “Rome” to soar.

Of course, it will have to do so without having Julius Caesar to kick around anymore. The second half of the season explored, in some detail, the way in which Caesar consolidated his power; he wanted to be a man of the people, as well as the man who ruled them as emperor. His henchmen shifted in status, too; Vorenus patched up his marriage and became a puppet of Caesar, “elected” to his new and expanded Senate, only to have his world come to a crashing end.With gladiator fights and elections and legal battles all at once, the last six episodes got closer than ever to presenting ancient Rome the way we imagine it must have looked and felt. One priceless sequence had lawyers clamoring for a legal case on the jailhouse steps; another had the results of a gladiator battle depicted as street theater for locals to relive the excitement.

But it remains, most of all, a great setting for an epic battle among women over the spoils of power. The women of “Rome” function as equal parties to the political drama, making it a unique mix of “The Young and the Restless” and “The West Wing” in its depiction of the backstage machinations of Roman life. In this episode, we see Atia – at one time or another, lover to many of the powerful men of her time – at formal odds at last with Servilia, the mother of Brutus and former lover of Caesar, who plots his murder. This is a revenge fantasy and catfight played out against the backdrop of the Roman government; these women use information and secrets like backroom political operatives and plot killings the way the rest of us plan lunch.

“Gentlemen, this is not some cheap murder,” Brutus declares flatly in a strategy session of Caesar’s enemies, plotting the need for his death; they want the Roman Senate returned to its people, and see no means of success other than to kill the emperor. “It’s an honorable thing that we do. It must be done honorably.” It is the kind of perfectly calibrated dialogue – written by the resident workhorse scribe of “Rome,” Bruno Heller – that enables this series to take on a story told so well by others. When Caesar is finally, brutally, stabbed to death by Brutus on the floor of the Roman Senate, the producers of “Rome” found a way to shift focus from the legendary Shakespearean version; here, Caesar says everything with his eyes, and nothing with his voice. It’s a murder that puts the hit men on “The Sopranos” to shame.

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HBO has started sending out the first 13 episodes of a new, chilling serial killer mystery on HBO On Demand. Right now it’s a hidden gem, but it won’t be for long; it’s called “Epitafios,” and it’s as addictive as any HBO series – a twisty yarn that calls to mind the depravity of “Se7en” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Filmed in Argentina, “Epitafios” is only available in Spanish, with English subtitles; it originally aired on HBO Latin America. Based on the first few episodes, the language barrier doesn’t make much of a difference; the story is simple enough to follow that if you miss a subtitle or two, you won’t be lost. It’s the story of a former policeman and a past love interest, a psychiatrist, who are brought back together when a serial killer takes aim at people involved with one of their previous cases. The killer designs the epitaphs for his victims on a drawing board before we ever quite comprehend who they are, or what the tombstone messages mean. It takes a while to get to the point, but maybe that’s the point. The entire first episode introduces an investigator character that you think will be sticking around for a while. Turns out he won’t.

For those who have an endless, voracious appetite for stories of murder and mayhem, “Epitafios” will engage. Based on the ratings for procedural dramas, it almost seems that the Argentinean producers who created “Epitafios” did so as a nod to its American predecessors. But it does have a tone of its own, a glamorous backdrop, and a smooth sense of style to add to its creepy plot. HBO is smart to sneak “Epitafios” out under the radar, rewarding its On Demand customers with a new way to impress their friends at the water cooler.

dblum@nysun.com