The Cleopatras
Eight-part drama covering the lives of the queens of Egypt from Cleopatra II in 145 BC to the death of the famous Cleopatra VII in 30 BC.
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Show Details
Languages
Seasons
Miniseries
1983
Cast
Michelle Newell
Cleopatra
Graham Crowden
Theodotus
Richard Griffiths
Pot Belly
Elizabeth Shepherd
Cleopatra, the mother
Robert Hardy
Julius Caesar
Christopher Neame
Mark Antony
David Horovitch
Chickpea
Amanda Boxer
Cleopatra Tryphaena
Antony Carrick
Canidius
Arthur Hewlett
Achoreus
Arthur White
Bolis
Brian Oulton
Aristarchus
Reviews
CinemaSerf
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.
