Amen to all that. “Spare a penny for Belisarius!”
Oh, and I think that the portrayal in I Claudius has some historical basis - given Octavian’s well-kown prudery.
I, Claudius is definitely worth it. But I have a nit to pick with the people who say it has horrible production values. The production values are entirely appropriate for the artform, which is a televised play. If you were to go see this in a theater, that’s more or less what it would look like.
Rome is also worth it, mostly for the spectacle. It’s drama doesn’t live up to its mastery of images.
First off, I don’t think we can really make any statements about what anybody would or would not have acted like. Trying to pretend that we today “really” know that Augustus was not a glad-handing friendly fellow is rather absurd. We know no more than we did fifty years ago, and all of it is based on rumor and speculation.
Second, the production values are perfectly fine. Sure, they didn’t have a huge budget, but the sets and costumes are still good, and they sometimes have quite a few people on-camera. I saw it just a couple weeks ago, and I had no problem with the lack of finery everywhere. It’s arguably much better than Rome in that regard - the emphasis is on the actors and not the backdrops.
In fact, the onyl real trouble is in the bloody naming conventions, and thatw as the Roman’s fault. See, they ony had a handful of accepable names for the wealthy and noble… which means that everyone is a Gaius Brutus Claudius or a Brutus Claudius Tiberius or a Claudius Tiberius Gaius or a Tiberius Gaius Brutus. Or something. And they usually shorten the names to a nickname, but without any rhyme or reason to it.
I actually prefer this sort of stuff, if the acting is good enough. Then you focus exclusively on the acting and what is going on in the story, and there is no distraction from the sets. I do watch movies just for eye candy, but that’s a whole different dynamic. I, Claudius had me riveted from moment 1.
And I just put Rome Season I on my Netflix. It’s going to have to be after Blood Diamond, though!
The portrayal of Livia in I, Claudius as one of the most evil people in history is, in the hands of Sian Phillips, done marvelously. Without major scenery-chewing, she just revels in her power and legal invulnerability. There is a scene where she invites a hired poisoner to dinner, where they indulge in an extended discussion of ways and means - shop-talk, really - followed by the revelation that the hired poisoner has herself been poisoned. Flawless.
Note, also, how the patrician class speak in public-school accents, the plebeians in various regional dialects, and the lower classes in Cockney and Scouse. Without making a big point of it, the practice clearly delineates who is who, making it easier for the viewer to keep the large cast straight.
Especially since a lot of them have similar names! A lot of them are named after the fathers so you end up with some crazy names that are 4 or 5 words long.
Another possible source for Graves’s Livia:
I’ve just begun re-reading I, Claudius & am loving it. Robert Graves had an exquisite classical education & at last had found a way to earn more money than his poetry would supply. (After all, he had a family to support.)
His other historical novels are also excellent. Along with Count Belisarius, I’d recommend King Jesus, Homer’s Daughter, *Hercules My Shipmate * & Wife to Mister Milton–in which Graves does a fine hatchet job on a poet I never liked, either.
I saw I, Claudius on the first showing & consider it one of the best TV shows ever made. Of course, you do expect a Dalek to come crashing through the cardboard scenery. But the adaptation of the novels is excellent–they had to leave out a lot of material. And the cast is absolutely superb.
Am I the only one who actually prefers drama to be on video? Perhaps it’s because I grew up with outstanding shows like Clavdivs. Of course, maybe it looks worse on American TV what with the PAL -> NTSC conversion and all that. But at the time it was a flagship drama show and not considered cheap at all 
.
As **Alive At Both ** Ends noted, Blessed played him as an overgrown schoolboy, boisterous, larger than life, loud, full of energy.
In reality, Augustus was maybe asthmatic, certainly sickly, being so ill in [checks wikipedia] 23 bce that his will was read to the senate.
Not only was he as ruthless as the next emperor, he was scheming, plotting, way ahead of time to reach his goals. Things rarely happened by chance in his life, but rather from his cunning ways to plan the outcome of events. He certainly wasn’t a physically impressive man and the numerous accounts, probably untrue, of people callling him a coward makes me think that he was careful not to come in harm’s way during campaigns.
Of course we can. Did you miss that Augustus actually wrote something akin to an autobiography? Now, of course that contains what he wanted to say and would hardly be called candid with modern standards, but when compared to other sources, we can get a pretty clear picture of the man. In fact, when if comes to Rome a couple of centuries before and after Caesar we probably have a better notion of “what it really was like” than for any other time or place in early history.
That doesn’t mean I can say that Augustus never drank wine and had a boisterous laugh, only that the way Blessed acted the part (as written by Graves and then re-written for the screen) seems inconsistent with the records we have of the man.
Tiberius’ “little fishes” completely repulsed me (and I think it actually turned the stomachs of the Roman citizens of the day, too).
Of course, the tag line for the film Caligula does hold true to a certain extent: “What would you do if you were the most powerful man on Earth?” The answer being, of coure, “Whatever the hell I wanted.”
Going back to the OP, definitely watch both. An amazing contrast, classic BBC drama of a book from the early 70s versus HBO series - with all that that implies - from the 00s.
Already been lots of comment about I, Claudius so I won’t say more that brilliant acting throughout and a very strong story line. I enjoyed Rome, particularly the first series, but it got a bit silly at times as they ratcheted up the sex and violence. The second series felt rushed and the balance between the high politics and the low life in Rome wasn’t so good. Still a fun watch and a shame they didn’t make more to see how Octavian developed.
People have pointed out the differences between Octavian in Rome and Augustus in I Claudius. That didn’t bother me too much, one is an old man presenting an image to his family - the other is the young man in the public sphere. Long time since I watched it but I think on occasions Brian Blessed allowed the ruthless Augustus to show before being put back in the cage. For me the thing that grated most in Rome was the differences between Julius Ceasar and Pompey in Rome and their characters from Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series - which I had totally bought in to :dubious:
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the contention that Octavian and Augustus were, for all intents and purposes, two separate people.
From the time that he inherited Caesar’s name and estate, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus waged a multimedia propaganda campaign that associated himself with Apollo, versus Antony’s self-proclaimed Hercules. He issued coins that glorified and glamorized his nondescript Julian profile, he began construction of a magnificent family sepulcher on the Campus Martius, he played up the supposed family decent from the goddess Venus, and he proved an utterly cold-blooded and ruthless force on the political (if not the military) battlefield. With the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, Octavian turned an about-face and set out to prove himself a modest, beneficent, avuncular, gentle hand on the tiller of state. He publicly forgave Antony’s supporters, halted construction on the family tomb in favor of something far less grandiose, then stunned the Senate by announcing his retirement from public life. As he no doubt intended, the leaders of the Senate begged him to return, which, after a masterful display of reluctance, he did. His path to absolute supremacy, though, contrary to what one might expect, was very gradual, and demonstrated an obsessive zeal for adhering to the letter (if not the spirit) of established laws and precedents. While the Senate bestowed upon him the title of Augustus (revered one), he preferred the more modest princeps (first among equals). He went to great pains to portray himself in the public eye as someone who wielded great influence in the affairs of state, but not as the supreme autocrat he actually was. From his resumption of administrative duties to the very end of his life, he worked to groom a successor who would rise slowly through the ranks and be accepted by the public as a familiar, popular figure with legitimate power and experience. That his hand-picked candidates seemed to die off with suspicious regularity forms the very basis of I, Claudius.
So while the ice cold Octavian seen in Rome and the avuncular prude Augustus portrayed in I, Claudius seem at the surface to be irreconcilable, an examination of the historical man demonstrates that the discrepancy is not so far-fetched. If you read the autobiography Charlie Tan mentions (Res Gestae Divi Augusti), it’s a masterful demonstration of how someone can, at the same time, boast of one’s accomplishments and yet come off as modestly self-effacing.
The OP feels very stupid that he didn’t know **I, Claudius ** was based on a book. I’m even more interested in watching it now that I know more about it. I watched most of the BBC Shakespeare dvds, so I’m quite fine with a stage production.
Think I’ll pick up the book as well.
Two books: I, Claudius and Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina.
I thought Antonius proclaimed himself “The New Dionysus”. Of course, nothing wrong with identifying yourself with both Hercules and Dionysus.
Yeah, his take seems much more like Pompey, to me. Well, Plutarch’s Pompey, anyway.
*I, Claudius *is worth it just for Sian Phillips. I know I’m not the first one to mention it, but it is just a gruesome delight to see Phillips’ Livia at work, even if it isn’t historically corroborated.
I can’t remember which I saw first for certain (I saw I, Claudius on repeat broadcast), but I think I recall being quite discomfited with Sian Phillips as Livia because I kept expecting her to act as Clementine Churchill. 
That scene completely cracked me up when I saw it when PBS re-aired the miniseries here some years ago. The reason? The actress playing the poisoner, Martina, was Patsy Byrne - who also played ‘Nursie’ in Blackadder II, hilariously.
If you like British media at all, one of the best things about watching ‘Claudius’ is playing ‘spot the obscure British actor’ with the minor parts.
NURSIE played the poisoner?! But Nursie is a sad demented woman with an udder fixation. And Martina is a poisoner.
Anyway I wholeheartedly push forth I, Claudius. And the books–I LOVED those. They still hold up, IMHO, and are juicy and delicious.
I had only ever seen her in *Dune *as the Reverend Mother, so I was prepared! I, Claudius’ Livia makes Rome’s Atia look like a cute widdle kitty.
I keep meaning to read the original books. I have too many books that I want to read, on top of the ones I *have *to read. 