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I Claudius
I read in The Guardian last week that HBO is planning to remake the 1970s BBC series I Claudius. Reaction on the right hand side of the sheugh seems initially to be hostile. I Claudius is regarded as a classic and one of the high points of the BBC in the 1970s along with Kenneth Clark's Civilization, David Attenborough's Life On Earth and Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man. In college I read the Robert Graves novel I Claudius and liked it very much. It's Graves's second best book after his brilliant memoir Goodbye To All That which is a must read for anyone interested in World War 1 and its aftermath (it's also a must read for anyone who has struggled through the ghastly E E Cummings novel/memoir The Enormous Room). After college I read Graves's sequel to I Claudius, Claudius The God which isn't quite as good, but I had never seen the TV series until a couple of years ago when I rented it from Netflix. I was pretty surprised to discover that this "classic" was actually very cheesy. Hammy, badly lit, filmed on cheap, wobbly sets, the BBC's I Claudius reminded me more of Blake's 7 or Dr. Who than the high art I had been expecting. The acting was poor and over the top and the art direction valiant but ultimately doomed by the BBC's limited budget. The scriptwriters cut out much of the novel's nuance and almost all of the humour and the whole thing is actually quite embarrassing today. If I were HBO I wouldn't worry about the critics from the UK who say that they are going to spoil a classic, those critics are either demented old luvvies or they haven't actually seen I Claudius for a long time.
24 comments:
Oh, man, I'm going to set my sister on you, and then you'll be sorry. Don't you understand it was all about Derek Jacobi?
Okay, she may have moved on to "Rome" so you might live.
But seriously, I Claudius is the only reason that late twentieth century Americans had any interest in or knowledge of early Rome at all. So stop with your dissing.
Yes, it wasn't great looking, but I have to say I love hammy acting when it's being done by top notch talent such as Jacobi, John Hurt, Brian Blessed, and so on. And the overall cheapness doesn't alter the fact that I, Claudius has a lot of juicy and compelling storylines. Speaking of WW I memoirs, have you tried Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer? Technically it's an autobiographical novel, but it's right up there with Goodbye To All That. Raw Material by Alan Sillitoe is in the same vein as Sassoon's book and it's also excellent. There's a German WW I memoir by Ernst Junger called Storm of Steel that's remarkable because, unlike most Brit memoirs, Ernst just loved WW I. Enjoyed every minute of it, apparently.
I rented a few episodes a couple of years ago and found them just as cheesily produced as you say. From a production standpoint, I, Caludius is no Rome.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
The concern I would have is that it would be a hammy,blood-soaked melodrama like The Borgias or Spartacus instead of the great drama it could be
I'm thinking maybe you had to be there.
Although I do like "I Caludius".
It was even worse before I corrected it.
In defence of Claudius, at the time it came out it was considered something of a TV landmark, which says more about how TV was produced in the mid-1970s than the actual production. Now they spend a million quid on each episode of Downton Abbey but 35 years ago TV was a different beast. But yes, I watched it again last year and laughed at the cheap, wobbly sets and Brian Blessed's hammy acting, although I still enjoyed Sian Phillips' Livia.
Seana
Certainly not Derek Jacobi worst performance - that would be his portrayal of Alan Turing in some thing for the BBC where he was twenty years too old and twenty pounds too fat for the role.
Cary
Agree about Sassoon. Excellent stuff. And those Pat Barker books aren't bad if you get the chance to read them.
Peter
I havent seen Rome but I cant see how it can be worse than I Claudius.
David
I'm not up to speed with Downton Abbey. Its kind of a Gosford Park thing, right? (Derek Jacobi was good in that).
Brian Blessed seems to play the same role in everything: Flash Gordon, Blackadder, I Claudius... I know people love him but he's always got on my nerves. I always end up sitting next to someone like that on a flight to London. Its exhausting.
I think David has nailed it on production values. I saw Jacobi in the Turing thing. Unmemorable. He was good, though, as, well Claudius, in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. And also in spoofing Hamlet on Frazier.
Also, Downton Abbey had good production values, but it was no Upstairs Downstairs, which did not.
Rome spared little expense portraying the city's squalor.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I used to work with Pat Barker's daughter.
Pat's present to her on her 21st birthday was her own placenta, frozen in a jar.
Whoa.
Rob
I think I'd prefer one of those cards with the silver key on it, but then thats just me.
It is interesting how this stuff is circling around. The Borgias and Spartacus (and The Tudors) were made to cash in on Rome which was cancelled because it was too expensive. So, The Borgias is cheaper, heading back towards I, Claudius territory and now I, Cladius is being remade.
But there is still a big difference between HBO and the Starz network (which makes Spartacus and Pillars of the Earth as Canadian co-productions) so there's a good chance I, Claudius will be a lot better than those shows.
I's funny, Rome made a big deal out of the fact it was filmed in Italy but I, Claudius has always seemed really British to me.
Maybe it's the British accents, John.
John
I wonder why they felt the need to film in Italy. Surely modern Italy is nothing like first century Rome.
I suppose it was nice to get a break from Vancouver.
Its the Cinecitta studios which are getting popular again
Ha, yeah, a nice break from Vancouver.
In the exra features on the DVD they claim by filming in Italy all the extras looked "Roman" and the set dec and props departments were made up of craftspeople more familiar with the material (I'm not sure if they meant material as in script content or material as in the stuff the sets and props were made out of).
But there was one funny story during production. There was another Roman history show, "Empire" filming nearby at the same time. When the crew of "Rome" found out if "Empire" got on the air in the US and was a hit before they finished the pilot they probably wouldn't go to series. And then the set of "Empire" burned down.
"Empire" was going to be a network show, though, on ABC, so it likely wouldn't have been as good.
Was it the part where they were filming Nero? Because mistakes happen.
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