Attempts to form a unified Germanic resistance are hampered by petty in-fighting between the tribal chieftains, and the selfish aspirations of certain tribesmen desiring peace with Rome.

These events eventually culminate on the date of September 11, 9 AD in a massive ambush of three Roman legions (some 15,000 men) at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where the Germanic people emerge victorious.

Costumes, props and buildings were very well done, the equipment of the Roman legionaries corresponded to historical reality, and the Germanic longhouses looked amazingly authentic.

"[10] For Forbes, film historian Sheena Scott rated Barbarians as "an excellent series that reveals a key historical event in Europe through a gripping tale of love, friendship, betrayal and revenge" and praised the "excellent production design, great performances, especially the main trio Jeanne Goursaud, David Schütter and Laurence Rupp, and the wonderful cinematography of the series.

In the cloak of a history lesson, this half-knowledge spreads, the historical background is reduced to a few key facts and only serves as a legitimization for the German variant of the mixture of love, violence and Norse mythology that has been in fashion since Game of Thrones and Vikings.

[12] The expectation that paid streaming services like Netflix have to stand out from the evening entertainment program is not fulfilled for the journalist Ambros Waibel from the newspaper Taz with Barbarians.

'[13] Archaeologist Matthias Wemhoff in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung criticized the depiction of Germania, shown in the agriculture, as a "dark, impenetrable forest landscape" as well as a cliched impression of a "rough, linguistically completely ignorant" rural society, which reflects the "complex canon of behavior in a group that has been relatively firmly established over centuries" as not fair.

Prehistorian Karl Banghard, also in the FAZ, opined that the series "had little to do with the everyday history of the 'turning point'"; specifically, he complained about the numerous historical inaccuracies, for example in relation to nutrition and clothing, but above all the distribution of roles between the "imperialist Romans against the indigenous Germans."

Due to the constantly new archaeological findings from the Fund region of Kalkriese, a presumed scene of the events, this picture will be continuously changed, enriched and refined.