The historian and novelist LJ Trafford, who knows the seedier, scurrilous side of Roman history as well as anyone does, reviews the BBC’s repeat of the 1976 series I, Claudius and finds that it’s still “brilliant”.
There’s this thing that happens whenever movies and TV get their hands on ancient Rome: they just can’t resist going BIG. There will inevitably be huge battle reconstructions, CGI tigers nipping at gladiators, lines of marching legionnaires in shiny helmets and a set that screams THIS IS A WEALTHY AND IMPORTANT EMPIRE, usually by gratuitous use of large marble pillars and gold splashed about the place.
The joy of the 1970s BBC serial I, Claudius, now being repeated on BBC Four, is that it completely ignores all of this (likely due to budgetary constraints). The emperor’s nephew Marcellus is holding important public games ones likely including gladiators, giraffes and men being mauled by lions, you say? Let’s have him walk up the stairs to the cheers of the crowd and then not show any of the resulting action.
Three Roman legions massacred in a highly filmic tension building ambush, you say? The emperor will hear about it in a letter, no need to show any of that.
An invasion of Britain? Off camera.
Having dispensed with the requirement of having legionnaires march about on screen looking dominating I, Claudius is free to concentrate on the history that really matters; the interpersonal relations at the heart of the Julio-Claudian dynasty or, as I like to call it, Shag, Marry, Murder.
The first episode sets up the family dynamics nicely as the ancient version of another more recent hit series, Succession. Here Emperor Augustus is the Logan Roy character looking around for someone to succeed this empire thing he has created. The two most likely candidates are Augustus’ old pal Marcus Agrippa and nephew Marcellus, who cannot stand each other but who each have their own band of loyal followers/would-be rioters prepared to support their candidate.
However, Augustus’ wife Livia has another man in mind, her own son Tiberius. Tiberius doesn’t have his own team of supporters due to his inability to be even remotely cheerful and a conversational patter that revolves around his inner darkness which are not known rallying cries for the would-be loyal supporter.
But no matter Tiberius’ flaws (including, as hinted in this episode some pervyness in the bedroom) mother dearest has other ways to promote her son…. Murder.
Now this, as any ancient historian will tell you is jolly unfair on the historical Livia and doesn’t make a lot of sense plot-wise either (why wait until Agrippa and Augustus’ daughter Julia produced two heirs who were in the way of Tiberius before despatching Agrippa, for instance?) but Siân Philips plays Livia with such studied malevolence that I’m totally going along for the ride.
Similarly brilliant is Brian Blessed as Augustus, an affable, jolly man at first glance but then who tosses out a one liner here and there that reveal the absolute core of hard, cruel steel at his centre. This is a man I can believe is both the ruthless Octavian who clawed his way to power and the genial first citizen family man Augustus.
Special mention also to George Baker who walks the walk of Tiberius quite literally as described by Roman biographer, Suetonius. “He strode along with his neck stiff and bent forward, usually with a stern countenance and for the most part in silence, never or very rarely conversing with his companions.”
Livia as a serial killer aside, the history is spot on and straight out of Suetonius, gossip and all. Pity anyone playing the Suetonius drinking game downing a drink for every spotted reference from the master biographer of the Julio-Claudians, for they would have been comatose by the end of this first episode.
The sets are as shadowy as any era without electric lighting would be and the details on the tableware, the furniture and the frescoed walls all make this feel more like the era than many other more recent attempts in movieland.
But let us get to the crunch, the prime reason for a review of anything is to answer one question: is it any good?
God yes, it is still brilliant. Who needs battles when you can have Siân Philips giving a cool glance at her next would-be victim? Chilling and compulsive viewing.
Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors by LJ Trafford will be published on 30 November, 2023.
She has also written Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome and How to Survive in Ancient Rome and, before them, the Four Emperors series of novels.
LJ has written other pieces for Historia including Gladiator sweat and leech hair dye; how to survive in Ancient Rome and Sex in Ancient Rome. You can also read our serialisation of her short story, The Wedding.
For more about the Ancient Roman period, see:
Why the Roman Empire grew so big, I’m Spartacus! Slave revolts in Rome and Why I write about the ‘obscure’ third century AD by Harry Sidebottom
Agricola’s victories in Britain and Domitian, an unlikely emperor by Simon Turney
A game of gods: religion in a changing Roman world by Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty
Did Roman Soldiers Suffer PTSD? by Anthony Riches
And the HWA’s collection of short stories, Rubicon
Images:
All BBC
