Shark Bytes

At only 13 episodes, and with such great subject matter and acting (mostly), it didn’t come close to jumping. The sets were pretty cheap-looking sometimes and the direction was often stagey, and let’s not get started on that weird silly-putty ‘ageing’ makeup job on Derek Jacobi as the older Clavdivs. The directors couldn’t show tremendous crowds so they played a recording of cheering and had the actors gesturing to nothing, and much was made of expository dialogue. However, Jacobi headed a generally excellent cast and the scripts were tight (though after studying the same period of Roman history at uni, one finds plenty of reasons to argue with parts of the historical interpretation), so a non-jumper.

It never JTS. I saw the PBS series, read the books, bought the DVD's. Last Christmas (2007). I visited Palatine Hill, and Tiberus' palace on Capri.

The sets were fine. Have you ever seen what is behind a theatre curtain?

The finest.

one of the best miniseries ever made

Terrific show!
Great writing and great acting make you completely forget the inexpensive, stagey sets.
My son thought this show was called "I, Clavdivs"!

Quite possibly the best historical drama ever presented on television.
Never JTS in its original, unedited version.
The edited A&E version was not as good (God forbid we should see a woman's breast on TV!) but even that heavy-handed censoring couldn't destroy this fine drama.
For those who can afford it, I recommend the DVD set.

This is one of the best shows I have ever seen on TV and I have been watching the idiot box for over 50 years now. This was one of those rare occasions when watching TV wasn't just a simple diversion, a time waster, or a real threat to ones intellectual well being. Quite the contrary. I remember that watching this series on my local PBS station back in the 70's prompted me to read the two novels by Robert Graves upon which the show was based. When a TV show can get one to read a book, that is almost always a good thing.

The only reservation that I have about the show has to do with the fact that the historical Claudius was more bloodthirsty than how he was portrayed in the series. But that is a minor quibble that cannot detract from the overall high artistic quality demonstrated in this work.

Hey Mirandir! I guess you had it all over my little bro. He proved to be particularly bright but at the first aforementioned screening in Australia he was seven and all that caught his attention and subsequently traumatised him for years was the animated tiled snake in the opening credits. ABC ran it roughly ten years later and I found it even better. Could never afford the videos or DVD. Clinically but brilliantly researched. The characters were beautifully drawn and played. I don't believe another series would have JTS.

I fail to see how a series like "I, Claudius" could JTS. It only had 13 episodes and they were all perfect. And it was based, reasonably closely, on Graves' "I, Claudius" and "Claudius The God". I think the adaption was superb; as another poster said, the original is short on dialogue and long on extraneous asides which, although interesting, add little to the main story. I first saw it on the Australian ABC in 1977. (I was 6). My gods, but it's good! It also horrifies me that it was edited in the US. Buy the DVDs people, they're well worth it.

Couldn't possbily jump!

Hats off to the Brits for this one!

The only problem I had with this magnificent series was the local PBS station showing and edited version.

Come on guys, grow up!

In England, one must be able to ACT on the stage BEFORE getting on television and/or film. Actors are not celebrities; most serve apprentice-ships before getting to play the leads.

Over there, you ain't a celebrity until you can put Sir or Dame in front of your name!

I, Claudius is the best history drama!

I agree with all postings that list this as finest quality TV ever. it could never jump the shark unless one could say that the Roman Empire jumped the shark (which, some might say, it did!) What's with all the griping about British accents? What do you want them to do, speak Latin? This show is responsible for my interest in Roman history, and I've learned enough never to even think about comparing Claudius and Caligula!

Having just re-watched this on DVD (gotta love DVDs!), I can offer the opinion that I, Claudius jumped after the 10th episode, when Claudius becomes Emperor. It's not that Derek Jacobi's acting suffers -- rather, he no longer has such outstanding villains as Caligula (John Hurt), Livia (Sian Phillips or Tiberius (George Baker) to play against. Somehow, the story is less compelling without them -- The major remaining villain is Messalina (Sheila White), who I found to be a little over the top, even for this series. Keep in mind that the last three episodes are still good television -- They're just not quite as good as the first ten parts, which rank among the finest moments of televised drama.

Never Jumped! Is there any finer portrayal of evil than Si‚n Phillips as Livia, John Hurt as Caligula or Patrick Stewart as Sejanus? This series is perhaps the most masterful example of the mini-series form, allowing more character and story development than a movie, but without the open ended format required by a regular TV series -- And here, the possibilities of the mini-series format are exploited to the full by a stellar cast. The scenery is a little cheap (in line with most of British Television at the time), but the cast is so compelling that you won't really notice.

In fact, probably the single finest television program ever done, period. Nothing less than brilliant from start to finish; Both Jack Pulman's scripts and the acting by nearly everyone were across-the-board tremendous. Blackly funny, dramatically powerful and historically evocative; What more could anyone want? For all of their massive budgets, no Hollywood epic has ever presented imperial Rome even half this well. The truth is that show is nearly impossible to discuss without simply gushing, and how much television can you honestly say that about? As for the pseudo-scholars who enjoy claiming that the show is historically inaccurate, all I have to say is, no it isn't. Robert Graves forgot more about the Roman Empire than most of us will ever know to begin with. One of the problems with modern historians is that they tend to write about extreme events in the ancient world based on a sort of arbitrary "probability scale", such as "Well, of course Caligula never appointed his favorite horse to the senate. Why, that's silly. What probably happened is that he claimed that a horse would make as good a senator as some of the actual ones, and so that's surely how that story got started..." In other words, once you throw out all the actual evidence, you can claim whatever you like. Whether Livia actually maneuvered all of Tiberius's rivals either into their graves or just out of the way no one can say for certain, but it can't be denied that they all very conveniently and suspiciously disappeared. And as for the one claiming that Claudius was "worse than Caligula", give me a break. Not even Claudius's worst detractors, in either the ancient or modern world would claim anything that looney.