I, Claudius was my introduction to Derek Jacobi (to my mind, maybe the greatest living actor), Brian Blessed, John Hurt and Patrick Stewart. It's also probably still the best thing that I've ever seen made for television.
@Gary DeBlasio I think he meant, as Derek dealt with his character's lines as the first script writer wrote them. But Derek appropriately enacted the shy social dullness, ineptness of the young stutterer family scapegoat and future shrewdly seeming harmless, obsequiously sycophantic Caligula uncle, then cuckold Emperor Claudius, in his apparent "King Log" dotage a brilliant historian of his dynasty.
It probably throws Millenials and Genzies if they watch I, Claudius now....to see Patrick Stewart play a villain! But he also played a SPY for BBC TV in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and it's sequel Smiley's People and he played None other than LENIN in Fall of Eagles 2 years before I, Claudius!
As magnificent as they all were no point naming them all for me Brian Blessed gave the profoundest, most multifaceted of all the performances ranging from Rage to the most intimate Humanity
I couldn't agree more, @lonzo9569 - that was awesome. I've never seen this before today and it was great. I wish there were more like this to watch now. A show that will be never be surpassed IMHO.
Well I thought it was game of thrones, well apart from the bad last two seasons, all the same just brilliant... And then I rewatched I Cladius and yes you are110% correct.
David Chase has said previously that I, Claudius was a major influence in creating The Sopranos....Tony's scheming mother in the Sopranos is even called Livia. So it's amazing to hear that Jack Pulman was thinking of the mafia in writing the dialogue for I, Claudius!
I’ve memorized so much dialogue over the years. But Livia’s ‘pep talk’ to the gladiators I practically memorized in high school when it first came out. “And don’t try to fool me, either. I know every trick in the book-including the pig’s blood in the bladder!”
Me too just watched it again but Britannicus still annoys me being at least twice the age of the character he plays he sounds like a half wit noting against the actor who did his best
Me,too! I bought it on tape and bought it again on CDs which I still watched all the way through three times in lockdown Poor,poor Derek Jacobi-I suffer with him and he was superb Tiberius CaligulaClaudius and Livia you cannot think who could replace them !
@@joanfordham1305 I've got the video box set, too. It's outlived my VCR, but it's all on my PC now, and gets watched at least once a year. And the classic lines get rolled out regularly in everyday conversation.
I Claudius is a masterpiece. It’s studio setting makes it feel like we’re watching a high-level theatrical performance. Also, the camerawork is stunning, long single shot takes where the camera drives the action between characters, swooping moves, crabbing shots and focus pulls, all with the HUGE 1970’s EMI 2001 pedestal cameras. Not something that was usually done. The camera crew deserve a lot of praise, especially as there was hardly any incidental music to mask the sounds of the camera wheels (which can be heard occasionally)
And such amazing acting. We completely forget that all the actors who played these legendary figures in history, as older people, were all quite young at the time. It is truly difficult to play a person over a lifetime of development. Everyone rightfully gives accolades to Jacobi, Blessed, Stewart, Hurt and Baker. But I think the true star of the production is Siân Phillips.
Re the actors' portraying (and their great makeup art simulating) their characters' aging over harrowing decades, Derek Jacobi especially segued amazingly from dewy adolescent to crusty, pasty faced old senex Claudius. And the makeup and mask pieces that created Augustus's gruesomely dying face after he ate the figs made Brian Blessed look, 45 years ago, older than he does today, astonishingly young.
I Claudius fired my then imagination as a 10-year-old in 1976. Not only that, it ignited a passion in me for all things Ancient Roman. A passion that has not abated, diminished even to this day as a 55-year-old! Thank you, BBC! Thank you Masterpiece Theater / PBS! Each year on the anniversary I binge-watch the entire series, and it has never lost its impact!
I watched it, aged 13, when it was first broadcast on the BBC. It was fascinating, brilliant but terrible, in the original sense of inspiring terror. John Hurt as Caligula, what an amazing performance. The scene where Caligula kills his sister ... I won't say any more but shocking is hardly the word for it. And Derek Jacobi ... a master at work.
I first saw “I, Claudius” on Masterpiece Theatre on PBS in 1977-I never missed an episode, and like many commenters here, I periodically re-watch it. The acting and writing are unparalleled, and this may sound weird coming from a musician, but I like the fact that there’s very little incidental music. The DRAMA itself increases the tension.
@rejoyce318 By Wilfred Josephs. Among other things, he did the music for The Ghosts of Motley Hall. That and I Claudius always take me back to childhood when I hear them.
I watched at the age 17…as a student…after homework…I looked forward to this brilliant, classic series…every week….with brilliant screenplay…the creme of British actors and actresses….as the years past…I watched it again…again…this…unmatched…British tv cultural production…God bless everyone who crafted this great jewel…in the BBC crown 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏😊🇬🇧
Absolutely agree Herbert Wise did such a good job of making Brian Blessed look like a real person Jack Pulman scripts wonderful I fell in love with the books as a child
What a splendid series. There is so much bad content out there dealing with the Imperial Period, so many cliches, light on actual history and the politics on the era. I, Claudius does such a phenomenal job of humanizing high politics. And history. A marvelous show incredibly well acted. I watch the whole series at least once a year, every year.
Kudos to them for giving Jack Pulman's script the praise that it deserved. I enjoyed the novels very much, but the fact is that just about any line that you remember from the TV series was written by Pulman, not Graves. (The one exception that I can think of is Herod's advice to Claudius to trust no one.)
Pulman's script is excellent, but it was Graves who created this interpretation of the historical characters, and many memorable lines in the TV series are either his or a variation of his wording (“Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out."; "Varus, Varus / Give me my three Eagles back!").
I wonder why he didn't attend? I was a great fan, but he lost me with his refusal to give Shakespeare his credit. He wants it to be an aristo - because they have the greatest access to books, higher learning, etc. So how many great books have the Duke of Westminsters written? Duke of Devonshires? Sheer snobbery.
The death scene of Augustus was incredible. We see Livia express herself and reveal herself for the first time. You see her perspective of the entire series of events up to that moment.
And there's a sense that it's also a release for Livia - to finally admit who she is and what she has done to a real audience that really matters to her, her husband, but in the context that the knowledge will die with him.
@@Malt454 extremely well put. It reminds me of an old idea - each successfully run business/ institution had two leaders - a charismatic person who inspires, and a person who organizes and gets the work done. Augustus is portrayed by Graves as a Machiavellian who put on an amiable mask and forgot that he once had it off. When Augustus argues with Agrippa about leaving to Syria, when he mentions to Drusus that his father was an enemy at one time to in part, see his reaction, before Augustus walks the comment back. We see these subsumed parts of his personality. Which fits, Augustus was often ruthless when dealing with the assassins of Julius Caesar/ his adoptive father. Augustus is the charismatic outsider/ salesman leader. Livia the wonk who gets the petitions answered during games...
@@jt7638 - Yes, the series definitely gives the impression that they are very much a power couple. Livia also deeply respects, maybe even loves, Augustus, but she is the more willful of the two and won't let Augustus be an obstruction to her plans. Here, Augustus comes off as a knife that can only remain sharp by being whetted, and that he has later lacked any real challenges and is now shocked when they occur (the fiasco of the German legions). it's interesting to compare the characterization of Augustus in this series with that of the much younger version in the series Rome. In some ways, I see Livia as a version of a cynical reading of Lady Macbeth; a woman denied real power by the conventions of her culture yet so worthy of having it that she seeks it through other means/manipulation.
The fact that I, Claudius is still being watched today is a testament to the magnificent writing and sheer prowess of the director and actors who’ve all had to have been geniuses to animate the giants they portrayed. I for one, feel very fortunate to see this gift every time. BRAVO!
I have to say, Sian Philips is right - the series' great moments probably owe more to Jack Pullman than to Graves' novels (which are, after all, told entirely from Claudius' POV and don't develop the other characters as well as the series).
I saw the production on tv in the US in 1976...and was riveted by the performances. Every in it brought their "A game" to every scene. The personally mild mannered John Hurt, was just terrifying. I own the dvd set, and watch the entire thing every other year. I only wish there was a "making of" documentary for this particular production with interviews and footage from back then.
"It was the screenplay. Without a screenplay you can't do anything". Yes! Everything about shows, movies, and plays, comes down to the writing! Why? Because story-telling without good writing is an objectively bad story and easily forgotten. Modern Hollywood and writers can learn a lot from the past that was so invested in writing a good story above all else.
The screenplay comes mostly from things that were breezed over in Robert Graves's books. I still wonder at the influence Rome has had on the western hemisphere. One small City-State grew into the most significant influence on western culture aside from the Greeks. I find it fascinating.
@@PeteSF1964 Yes but it's also true because of the Romans we still have that, classical Greek influence as well as the more, practical influences from Rome herself.
@PeteSF1964 John Romer did a series about Byzantium and at the end, he briefly summarised what happened after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was astonishing to realise just how long the Roman influence lasted in the political functioning of Europe. Right up to the Kaiser and Tsar titles being derived from the name Caesar and carrying authority that had come originally from the (Holy) Roman Emperors.
I wish I could proclaim like Brian Blessed at work meetings - what a voice & charisma! Livia is just perfect and deliciously scheming. Have loved this series since I first watched it 30 years ago, and return to re-watch it multiple times. There really is nothing better than it.
I've just watched the series again and my favorite scenes are with the brilliant Derek Jacobi and John Hurt, especially the scene when Claudius discovers that Caligula has become a "god".
I remember an earlier interview with Derek Jacobi said the director kept him and the other actors in the scene with John Hurt in the dark until John Hurt did his scene as Caligula to get their reaction because Derek Jacobi and the other actors didn't know what John Hurt was going to do.
I agree - those scenes were great comedy (dark comedy....). And when, right after speaking with Caligula and receiving this news, Claudius casually (archly) informs his mother and Herod that Caligula and his sister are now gods, but, oh, by the way, "We're not."
@@rebeccae.5217 Derek’s comedic timing on that was excellent. I just watched it tonight. Claudius comes in and tells the family how Caligula is now a god. Pause - then tells Caligula’s sister/wife Drusilla “you’re a god too”. Longer pause - tells rest of family “we’re not”.
Always loved me some Brian..the BBC presentation was eye opening for a young Detroiter in 1976. But, I always will recall the scene chewing effort in Flash Gordon...the beard...all the toothy smile. The Brits always seem to have so much fun doing anything...from drama to comedy.
I NEVER agreed that the makeup was any significant drawback to THIS STUPENDOUS, AWESOME MASTERPIECE! MY own favorite scene was John Hurt's "metamorphoses" from a mere Caesar Caligula, the THIRD Caesar, to the god, first, Jove, then a bit later to Zeus, because, said the both terrifying, and hilarious Caligula, Jove was but a mere pale derivative of his great original, Zeus. Concerning what Brian Blessed above says of Sean Phillips' character ,Livia, is TRUE, because once she murders her hubby Caesar Augustus, her son Tiberias, beautifully played by George Baker, BTW, turns quite troublesome for her, and not actually so controllable, or NOT the way she would have liked, and this transformation is divinely performed, soooo delightful. Witness the "trial" and condemnation of Livia's old crony, Pizo, from the eastern provinces. Tiberius, in deed, blows his mom, Livia, off and will NOT spare doomed Pizo at any price, and he is in fact stabbed to death by his own wife in order to spare the rest of her family from the wrath of Tiberias. Pretty grim stuff, soooo beautifully done. Patrick Stewart makes his debut in his segment as the dreadfully murderous, Sejanus, whom, though the series does NOT deal with this part of history, Sejanus was he who dispatched Pontius Pilate to the troublesome east. And of course Sejanus the uber violent sociopath meets his own violent death at the hands of his ambitious second in command, Macro, along with the brutal murder all his children. Rome was not safe for ANYONE, it seems.
I remember hearing in a documentary that Peter O'Toole -- Siân Philipp's husband at the time -- attended the first studio sessions of _I, Claudius_, and remarked afterward "you know, the critics aren't going to like this... but _millions will watch!_"
I watch the DVD set straight through every year. Sometimes I can't even make it through a full year without putting it in. While the series remains excellent throughout, something sort of dies with Augustus and later Livia. It's more of the same, but no other female character schemed with the style that Livia did. Great to see them together again!
@@sonnyroy497 Vanitas, vanitatum ... to the amazing moment when (as I recall) a swift swordstroke from behind seemed to lop off her head, in a closeup, twd the camera.
Agreed. The death of Augustus ended a lot of the warmth of the series. The death of Livia ended the strategic intelligence as she was portrayed as such a crucial guide and ruler for the early imperial age.
"I, Claudius" was a masterpiece! When it first premiered it was a revelation. In California, it was shown on PBS on Sunday nights, and on Monday morning everyone would be at the water cooler gushing about the previous night's episode. It was a cultural phenomena!
My first trip to the UK was September1976. I remember watching TV in my hotel room and I Claudius was on. I was stunned by how risqué it was for the time. Brilliant writing and acting indeed. Couldn't wait to see the whole series when it made its way to Canada.
I was 16 and I, Claudius was my introduction to PBS and Masterpiece Theater and to ancient Rome. I actually have been to Rome numerous times while in the service and although I know the series was not shot there I couldn't help but be reminded about the series when I visited the city.
I think this series was one of the best things the BBC produced from it's incredible music score to the cast of so many talented actors, the wonderful set designs and yes the makeup was part of it's day but this series will always remain a classic, thank you BBC.
I've lost count of how many times I watched I Claudius.I don't care how bad the makeup was, or that in the gladiator scenes we never saw more than about 5 people. The portrayals of Livia, Augustus, Claudius, Tiberius, Caligula, Sejanus and the rest are all that I care about. Beautiful coda there with Jacobi. He did a radio production of I, Claudius a while back, well worth finding for those who don't know it. Thanks for posting this short interview!
i am canadian and remember as a kid in the 1970s stumbling across I Claudius on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) after a hockey game broadcast and being absolutely rivetted to the TV for the next hour....still watch it every 2 or 3 years
Oh ...what memories ... 12 years old and allowed to watch this .., the actors were perfect ... John Hurt as Caligula especially but they were all superb
My Father and I watched in the States on PBS' "Masterpiece Theater" together.. Transfixed by not only the story, but the blinding brilliance of the performances. I remember being slightly disappointed when an episode ended and making plans to be sitting in our den the following week to catch the next one. Fantastic childhood memories of a series that bonded us in our mutual love for history and storytelling...
My family sat enthralled by this series and it was the only 'soap' we watched. And we weren't highbrow in any way but tv set a high culture bar in those days and the viewing public just went with it. Another huge fave in our house was The Roads to Freedom - my intro to existentialism and Sartre, and the sheer bloody pointlessness of it all. When I won my school 6th year's English prize I exchanged the book token for Sartre's Nausea - WH Smiths had to order it specially for me. I was a strange - but well-read - child!
You were lucky to get a token. At my school we got what we were given. I won a prize for coming top in maths. A 25p paperback about Agatha Christie pratting about in Harrogate. While Felicity wet blanket Lander got an atlas, A BIG one, at least two quid's worth for coming top in RE. I went on to do big adding up for a living, she didn't even become a vicar.
Even though it was low budget production we can all see how much the manuscript and actors performance can make a masterpiece none the less. Greetings from Sweden who saw this when they broadcasted it here. Bear in mind that we watched it with subtitles (no dubbing) so all nuances from the actors was intact.
Brian Blessed, as "Caesar Augustus", Siân Phillips as "Livia Drusilla" and Derek Jacob as "Claudius " with a brilliant and excellent interpretation of the character's stutter was unique. they are one of the best actors of the whole time, there is no one who could interpret the roman characters like them, many of the actors of today try to impersonate the roman characters like them in the movies of today.
Listening to the ICONIC lines from Sian Phillips, Brian Blessed, and watching Derek Jacobi's re-visitation of the stuttering rendition of Claudius was AMAZING.....
I grew up with this , we were doing the Rome empire in history at school . I asked the history teacher a few awkward questions about the morality of the romans !!!!
I was in Canada when I, Claudius was first broadcast on PBS and our Latin teacher gave us a note for our parents that said we should be allowed to watch it. That will always be a special time for me and I'll always treasure it. I immediately purchased both both 'I Claudius' and 'Claudius the God' in hard cover and have hade home media of it ever since. The DVD sets are the best due to the extra material included. Current copy is Blu ray and looks absolutely wonderful. I'll go and re-watch the show and read the books every few years or so. I always got the Mafia aspect of story, I'd be very curious what the actual Mafia thought of the show since that crime organization can base its origins back 2,000 years to Sicily of that time.
Our HS Latin classes figured very early in the series that if we all watched the Sunday night episodes of "I, Claudius," Monday's classes would be discussing that week's episode. And if we didn't get around to doing our homework for Monday, well... 😉
Yup. One of the best Television miniseries on either side of the Atlantic. EVER. I think that in answer to this here in the States they gave us......The Adams Chronicles?????? Brian, Sian, and Sir Derek have still "got it". GOD they can still nail those lines.
@@help4343 I disagree in that Adams Chronicles and I Claudius are filmed almost like plays on video with people mostly known for theater work in both----Roots had a pretty big name cast of actors famous for television and film already...shot on film. All 3 productions though, have in common a show a family through the generations. Honestly America has never truly been able to answer the BBC when it comes to historical mini series so maybe Roots DOES fit as it's the best America has ever done. I', Claudius is probably the best the UK has done but hard to say. Henry VIII and Elizabeth R were pretty awesome too
@@help4343 neither show is about a family through the generations like I, Claudius, Adams Chronicles, or Roots. That was the analogy. But yes they ARE historical.
After my wife and I had watched the series, for years we kept using quotes from it. "P...p...poisoned??", "Not slept?" and "Only once?" were our favourites.
My favourite scene was when Caligula summoned Claudius to the Palace at about 3 am and gave him a dance performance dressed in veils. Claudius had to keep a straight face because he was terrified of the capricious Caligula.
No idea how many times I've watched this - and always love it. This was such a great well written and acted series and I'd enjoyed Graves' books too but actual research of the historical characters and events strayed from the literature. No matter. Interesting to discover that a young friend I'd known in the way back time had a small silent part; Amanda Kemp must have had a good agent as she was in the credits despite the mute role as nanny for Claudius and his wicked young wife. Thanks so much for this, Ms Beard.
An excellent series with an outstanding cast....Derek Jacobi as Claudius will always be my favourite.Watched it first in 1976 and continue to watch it over and over again.
I was born that year. Ive only seen some of them shows on BBC open university and the Learning Zone. Love Brian Sian and Derek. Genius is a perfect way to describe them all ❤
