Classics Revisited: 'I, Claudius' (1976)

There’s something arresting about the texture of I, Claudius. Watching the legendary BBC miniseries from 1976 that — with plenty of cynicism and snark — charts the conspiracy and coups of the first four emperors of the Roman Empire, you’re struck by the theatricality of the performances, the sets, and the make-up. For a cost-conscious ‘70s British drama (staged and blocked expertly by director Herbert Wise), leaning on the stateliness and thriftiness associated with a stage production is a no-brainer – the 12-episode serial fills its sprawling cast with thespians pulled from the ranks of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who sell the warm hospitality and intelligence of the Roman Imperial clan, all while their lasciviousness, treason, and paranoia eat them from within.

In the years before HBO budgets could commit to the degree of historical detail we see in Rome, Game of Thrones, or The Gilded Age, this Roman drama relied on two things to sell its epic scope: performances oozing with venom and emotion, and sharp, compelling scripts, adapted from the 1934 and 1935 novels of English author Robert Graves by screenwriter Jack Pulman.

The series was shot on standard television cameras for color broadcast TV – EMI 2001s, which were also used on longstanding BBC programs like EastEnders and Top of the Pops. The video images rendered by these big, clunky TV studio cameras lend I, Claudius an immediate and striking edge: the colors are washed but the faces are sharp, often with pools of light on the actor’s pale faces, these emperors, usurpers, and heirs feel present and urgent in front of us, calling to us from their fifty-year-old echoey sets and darkened chambers, hoping they will evoke a historical period some 2000 years ago with sheer will, dramatic precision, and the knowledge that tales of ambition, ego, and scandal will always hook audiences.