Blog Rating: 8.90 out of 10
I, Claudius - Emperor and God, produced by the BBC in 1976, based on the novel by Robert Graves.
The series recounts in detail all the conspiracies of the Roman imperial family from the reign of Emperor Augustus to the end of the reign of Emperor Nero. The characters lie, cheat, manipulate, poison and kill in search of power.
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| Derek Jacobi as Claudius |
The story is told from the point of view of the elderly Emperor Claudius, who, on the threshold of his death, makes his final statement to the entire family. In short, he sits in his study and writes his memoirs.
Old, fragile and under the premonition of his own death, Claudius, ruler of the Roman Empire, decides to write the story of his life. Reconstructed from the memory and stories of others, the story already begins with events before his birth, and in the course of the plot a net is deployed tied in three strategic points: intrigue, betrayal and death by accident. If you think your family is bad, you haven't seen anything yet.
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| George Baker (Tiberius) |
The Mater Familias Livia, the wife of Emperor Augustus, is the center of all evil. With the help of manipulation and poison, she knows how to turn everything and everyone around. She is the smartest, but she is certainly not the only bad apple in the imperial family. Her son Tiberius is tough and her great-grandson Caligula is a maniac. Good family members are exterminated one by one. Only the lame Claudius escapes because he consciously stays on the surface and increases his clumsiness. Members of his crime family do not see him as an opponent in the ongoing struggle for power.
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| Sian Phillips (Livia) |
The optical design of the series was extraordinarily spartan; although there are always nice little details to admire, in general, the staging is very unspectacular. Obviously, the creators here were one hundred percent theater-oriented. Some of the sets are so small that apart from a few paper-mâché pillars, a chandelier and black curtains, only the actors can be identified. There are no external recordings at all.
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| John Hurt (Caligula) |
The BBC-produced series contains enough material to keep viewers intrigued throughout its thirteen episodes.
Although viewers today are much more demanding than they were forty years ago, the fact that the entire series was shot in the studio does not detract from the quality. The only thing that can be said to the detriment is that the series is a bit slow at times.
