La Reine Cléopâtre

A badly acted, badly mate, poor docu series, Netflix have put out an absolute howler with this one.

I have always thought the purpose of a documentary was to educate, as much as entertain, there is so much about this that just doesn't work, I'm not quite sure I recognise the title character at all.

There is not enough input from the experts, and what there is, I just found so questionable. What should have been dramatic, exciting and educational, was dull, flat and uninspiring, what a shame, Cleopatra's story is a fascinating one, this does not do her any justice.

I spent a couple of hours on a drab Sunday evening watching it, I genuinely hope you don't do the same, genuinely don't waste your time on this one.

1/10.

Firstly, I need to say that I don't care that a person of color was chosen to play the lead.

That being said, to call this work of pure fiction a "Documentary" is ridiculous. I watched the first episode and had to give up. I do understand that to make a series about someone who lived a couple thousand years ago will required much "filling in of the blanks" but, come on!, at least fill in those blanks with something that was remotely probable.

I am sick of hearing people talk about historical people based on fictionalized Hollywood portrayals of them. This farce will just add to that.

This series, my friends, is FAKE NEWS.

Pure and poor fiction - nothing more.

This must be the jewel in the crown of Hollywood's obsession with identity and the perfect example of a whole smogarsboard of mistakes. From the unfortunate trailer that must have been designed with the explicit intent to create controversy- why elser put that silly old woman with her grandma into it?-to the girl power vibe that Jada Pinkett further emphasized with her melodramatic narration. The director seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between fiction and documentary. People keep bringing up the example of Liz Taylor, yet the movie never claimed to be a historically correct account, but pure entertainment. This is not the case with this unfortunate concoction that puts Cleopatra into the same basket with other African queens (whatever that means), though neither her ancestry nor her position imply she had anything to do with Egyptian heritage apart from the fact she ruled over the country. If the world's leading Egyptologist who's currently searching for her tomb, Zahi Hawass, calls this a fradulent mess, the only thing viewers whose grandmothers had some basic education can do is to give this self-righteous pile of wishful thinking a skip. In the attempt to make her look more relatable, textured and stronger, Adele James made a fool of herself. I suggest to the director to stick to fiction in the future. If she continues with her wrecking ball-approach to history, who knows how far she might go. Maybe the granny from the trailer knows it, but I don't want to know. Let's hope we can put this traumatic experience to bed soon and I hope the same thing doesn't happen to Adele James' career as well.

It is hard to take this "documentary" seriously when there are errors is in just about every scene. Ancient Egypt existed for three and a half millennia, and the Ptolemaic period of Greek control and its involvement in Roman policies, especially the Roman civil wars is a very specific period. For example no Egyptian was spoken at the court, Greek was spoken.

But getting costumes wrong, getting basic timelines of battles (like Actium) wrong, placing Cleopatra at events we know she was not present at, mixing up things done by Anthony with those done by Octavian and an unending series of errors just makes this impossible to watch. It is clear no experts, or even anyone with a basic knowledge of the history of the time and place was involved, or if they were, their advise was inverted.

The dialogue is also laughably childish s is the acting.

For a Documentary series , this " show " failed at all levels .

Zero historical accuracy , poor casting , not referring to a single reputable historical expert either from Greece / Macedonia where cleopatra decent or Egypt where she ruled and lived , beyond naive script as if it's meant for soap opera , poor acting , poor directing , it's amazing how bad a Documentary try to attract attention by being produced in a soap opera like , there would have been some level of understanding if it was presented as a drama or " inspired by " movie but to present a documentary with this extreme poor writing , producing , acting & direction is just unreal.