I, Claudius is a 13 part BBC adaptation of Robert Graves’ books I, Claudius and Claudius, the God, produced in 1976. PBS first aired the miniseries in America as a Masterpiece Theater special with Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart and John Hurt as the main characters.
The miniseries follows the history of Rome, as told by Claudius, as an old man. I, Claudius starts with Emperor Augustus trying to find an heir to his throne. His wife, Livia, plots to make her son, Tiberius, emperor. This plotting, scheming, killing and double-crossing continue for many years, through many emperors and throughout Claudius’s own rule.
Claudius had a limp, a stammer and nervous ticks that his family thought was embarrassing.
The Julio-Claudians, Claudius’s family, kept him out of public life until his sudden coronation at the age of 49. The family assumes he is an idiot and Claudius uses this to help him survive in a murderous empire.
The cast and crew of I. Claudius won many awards for the series. Derek Jacobi and Sian Phillips won Best Actor and Best Actress at the 1977 BAFTA Awards. Tim Harvey won a BAFTA and a Emmy for Art Direction and I. Claudius holds the 12th spot in the 100 Great British Television Programmes release by the British Film Institute. Entertainment Weekly puts the series in the Top Ten Best miniseries on DVD. It is also listed in TIME Magazine as of the “100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME”
After I, Claudius aired, a wide array of large-scale historical dramas started popping up. This idea spread to comedy. The most notable of these is Blackadder.
DVDs and videos of the series include the 1965 BBC documentary The Epic That Never Was, about the attempted Alexander Korda.
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