The Cleopatras (1983)

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 creature... 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.