The Cleopatras

A decent script suffers from truly awful production values and lousy editing. The cheap, pasteboard sets (often merely a sound stage with curtains or lighting filling in for walls) the lousy sound (lots of stage echoes), and questionable costume choices (no, they did not dress like ancient Egyptian tomb paintings) all combine to undermine what is, by itself, a fascinating romp among some of history's most ruthless royals: the ever-murderous Ptolemies of Egypt. The acting is uneven and pales when compared to the much superior I, Claudius, of which this farce was obviously intended to mimic. If the viewer can overlook the choppy editing and poor production standards, the story itself becomes quite entertaining. I would love to see this series done better. At least the idea was sound---an Egyptian version of I, Claudius---but it's a shame the BBC put so little faith or investment into it.

I've only seen this from youtube, and that from what appears to be videotaped years ago from a TV broadcast. The other reviewers have it right - a cheesy, zero budget production, shocking to our eyes 40 years later for exposed (yet unattractive) breasts and the psychotronic visuals and segue fades.

But the history - which is why I was watching it - isn't bad at all, and tells an almost unknown story of the murderous Ptolemy family, the last Pharaohs, a Greek family established after Alexander conquered Egypt, and the last dynasty before the Romans ended what was left of the Egyptian empire, after a 2,500-3,000 year run. It gets better as it goes along, possibly because of the efforts of the redoubtable Robert Hardy, a hardy perennial in 1970s mini-series, and because the story is more familiar of the last Cleopatra, lover of Caesar and Marc Antony- Cleopatra VII. The costumes and dancing also seem to have been well researched, Even the strap-on beards are accurate, if a bit silly looking, and the Pharoahs do wear the battle helmet only when appropriate.

If you enjoy history, and 1970s mini-series (truly the golden age of history and other mini-series, at least with respect to historical accuracy), roll your eyes a few times and suspend judgement of bizarre effects and enjoy this series. It deserves to be dusted off and made available on DVD or streaming.

Written by Philip Mackie, who also penned "The Caesars" (1968), I recall the furore at the time here in the UK when the BBC started showing "The Cleopatras". This eight-parter was accused of being a seedy, tawdry - and just about everything else pejorative - depiction of the Ptolomeic court in Alexandria that saw a multitude of women called Cleopatra rule Egypt. What those criticisms failed to acknowledge is that this is pretty much exactly how these depraved, incestuous individuals did behave. Mothers married sons, fathers their daughters - indeed it would have been quite possible for your mum, your brother and your camel all to have been the same person... What is bad about this, though, is the casting - Richard Griffiths as "Pot Belly" and Graham Crowden as narrator "Theodotus" are dreadfully miscast from the outset, and along the line we find similarly misfiring contributions from Robert Hardy ("Caesar") and a dreadfully dry Patrick Troughton ("Sextus"). The visual effects - sliding/mixing VT and virtually no outdoor photography make the staging look cheap and static; and the plethora of indistinguishable actresses portraying the title role give us very little by way of a glimpse into their devious, despotic and debauched existence. Sadly, the thing just hasn't aged at all well - and for such a fascinatingly rich seam of stories and characters, this series falls well short of competent.

This was an interesting series, it made a real effort to re-create style and manner of the Egyptian court. I remember a lady professor (I think it was) at the time saying it was interesting to see professional dancers translating the fixed and stylized images we have from tomb paintings into actual dance. Did they have bare breasts? Yes, the tomb paintings do, so the dancers do. Every effort is made to keep the costumes match what we know of dress at that time.

The series set an entirely believable note of claustrophobic pomposity. We do know that the Egyptian court was remarkably insulated from the ordinary Alexandrians, whom they feared, and they had good reason to to. It was a very inward looking group.

The series is bedeviled by the occasional outbreak of truly dreadful acting, e.g. Caesar's reaction when Cleopatra is unrolled from her carpet - that is the clip that is always shown. But most of it was pretty good. The contrast between the straight laced, changing to thuggish Romans is nicely contrasted with the hedonistic Egyptians. Sadly, Cleopatra is all wrong. She is presented as a sort of precocious 6th former, a 17 year old convent schoolgirl, whereas it is quite obvious that she was in fact a very tough and ruthless survivor from an early age. More like Elizabeth I than some kind of ingénue.

I have long thought that the BBC should issue the series in DVD, but 1983 was in the early days of video recorders and the rights situation may just be too complicated.