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The Sunday Post: I, Claudius

2016-09-25T09:00:00+00:00

Claudius (Derek Jacobi), established as Emperor of Rome, contemplates the conquest of Britain - this time, Brexit would take several hundred years to come into effect

Forty years ago this week, on 20 September 1976, ��2 broadcast the first episode of one of its best remembered classic serials, I, Claudius.

Based on the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves, it was the story of one of the lesser-known Roman emperors and the dynasty he belonged to, whose family business, as producer Martin Lisemore memorably put it, was ruling the world.

At this time, adaptations of novels on �� television fell into two camps, the more popular works shown on ��1, while more challenging or obscure novels went to ��2 (at this time billed as The ��2 Serial). These would go out in longer episodes – typically forty-five to fifty minutes – while ��1 adaptations were twenty-five to thirty minutes for each installment.

Despite being just the latest in a long line of �� adaptations, I, Claudius stood out from the rest. To begin with, the novels, written in the mid-1930s, are in a very accessible style. Although Robert Graves was a poet and a classical scholar, the novels were written as popular fiction to earn money, so Graves’ writing is not dry, but very readable. He is adept at bringing life to the historical characters and events, derived from his knowledge of classical authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus.

The adaptation for television is also skillful, with the dramatist Jack Pulman bringing his own light touch, and making it his own while being true to the spirit of Graves’s books. It’s no mean feat either, because of the complicated relationships between the characters, most of whom are related to each other. As with The Forsyte Saga back in 1967, Radio Times helpfully included a family tree in their preview article. There was also a short introductory programme In Nineteen Hundred Years… presented by the series’ historical adviser Robert Erskine, to give the background to the series.

The Claudian family tree, vital to make sure you don't accidentally marry someone you're not already related to...

Jack Pulman had been writing for television and radio since the late 50s, and he adapted his first of many classic serials, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, for ��2 in 1965. In 1972 he gained his longest and most challenging commission when the �� asked him to tackle War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s mammoth tale of upper-class Russian families during the Napoleonic wars, which ran to 20 episodes. He also wrote the first four episodes of the 1975 version of Poldark, before being approached by producer Martin Lisemore to adapt I, Claudius.

Lisemore himself had come up through the ranks of the �� drama department, before producing his first serial, Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, in 1970. Since then he had worked on ��2 classic serials (with one exception, 1975’s The Master of Ballantrae, for ��1), including Heinrich Mann’s Man of Straw, in which the lead role was taken by a young actor called Derek Jacobi.

After completing How Green Was My Valley (starring Stanley Baker and Sian Phillips), I, Claudius was his next production, with experienced director Herbert Wise given the task of realising the drama. There was one contractual hiccup: Graves had sold the film rights to Alexander Korda’s London Films, and an abortive version starring Charles Laughton was commenced in 1937. The rights still remained with London Films, who were credited on the �� series as a result.

Though thirteen 50-minute slots were allowed for the dramatisation, it was decided that since the first episode only featured Claudius’s birth at the end, it would make more sense to combine episodes 1 and 2 into a feature length episode so that viewers could see the character as part of the action in week 1. Thus it was transmitted as 12 parts, although a 13-part version was available for foreign markets (the extra episode was called Family Affairs).

Filming for the I, Clavdivs title sequence is ruined when the Director General's pet snake, Neville, escapes from his vivarium (that's yer actual Latin that is...)

Claudius did appear at the beginning and end of almost every episode, in framing sequences of him as an old man at work on the history of his family. The rest of the story was thus largely depicted in flashback, gradually coming closer to the ‘present’ time. These sequences allowed us to see the mature Claudius and gave an idea of his true personality.

It was decided to feature no location filming for the serial, for artistic reasons rather than a result of low �� budgets, though it meant more money could be spent on other aspects of the production. The only film used was for the title sequence: a simple but arresting shot of a snake slithering across a mosaic representation of the main captions.

Apart from music featured within the action – trumpets announcing the entrance of emperors, for example – the sole piece of music was the title theme, composed by Wilfred Josephs and performed by early music specialists David Wulstan and the Clerkes of Oxenford.

One of Herbert Wise’s first tasks as director was to cast the large array of major parts the production required. Firstly, there was Claudius himself, who was one of several roles who had to age several decades through the series, starting as a callow youth and ending as an old man, with the help of the �� make-up department. The actor had also to contend with Claudius’s physical afflictions – a limp, a twitch, and a stutter – without losing sight of subtlety of characterisation. (Ashley Knight had the task of portraying Claudius as a boy – with the same range of impediments as his older self.)

Claudius, while being thought a simpleton by most of his family, was a survivor, and the series shows his range of response to the changing political situation around him. After much deliberation (with candidates including Ronnie Barker), Derek Jacobi was chosen as someone who could convey all these things. Early scenes with Claudius and his contemporaries, however, employ child actors, and Other major characters included the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula, plus Augustus’s wife Livia, whose scheming to ensure the succession of her son (by her first husband) Tiberius provides the driver for the plot in the first half of the series.

The second half shows the consequences of what Livia has unleashed, after her death. Sian Philips, fresh from How Green Was My Valley, was cast in the role, and she also had to be ‘aged up’, from middle-age to decrepit old age by her final episode, Queen of Heaven.

The other three emperors were played by Brian Blessed, (in one of his few beardless roles since Z Cars), as Augustus, the reigning emperor at the start of the series, George Baker as Tiberius, and as Livia’s grandson Caligula, an extraordinary performance by John Hurt.

Hurt, who had just been in the much-lauded The Naked Civil Servant, was reluctant to take the role at first, but was persuaded by the quality of the actors he would be working with. Herbert Wise organised a pre-production party, in contrast to the usual 'wrap' party at the end of a series, as too many actors would have moved on to other jobs by then, which enabled the cast to get to know each other before starting work.

Derek Jacobi with Robert Graves when the latter visited the set of I, Claudius. Both men had German ancestry, and both went to St. John's College - Jacobi at Cambridge, Graves at Oxford

Blessed plays Augustus as an ordinary man, who makes the best of his unsought role as emperor and is very successful. By the time the series opens he has been doing the job for many years, and he is considering the succession. Despite Livia constantly badgering him to pick her son Tiberius, there are plenty of other suitable candidates.

Tiberius himself doesn’t really want the job, he enjoys being a soldier, but Livia forces him to divorce his wife and marry Augustus’s daughter Julia to edge him towards the throne. Sian Phillips gives another of the series’ outstanding performances as the ruthlessly ambitious empress, who discovers after all her machinations that her son Tiberius is a disappointment to her, and in her final hours reveals she wants to be made a goddess after she dies.

When Tiberius eventually succeeds, he leaves the running of Rome to his ambitious lieutenant Sejanus (Patrick Stewart) until confronted by evidence that Sejanus is plotting to depose him, at which point the rebellion is crushed.

By the time Tiberius finally dies – he is memorably polished off when he seems to be coming back to life by an ambitious centurion – the heir apparent is the young Caligula, who has connived in amoral behaviour up to and including the death of his own father. Soon after assuming the throne Caligula falls ill, but on recovery is convinced he has become the Greek god Zeus.

Claudius, who has reluctantly become a confidant of the new emperor, realises Caligula is mad and expects him to be quickly deposed. Claudius’s folly throughout the series is his desire for Rome to be turned back into a republic, as it was until Julius Caesar’s time.

The episodes featuring the reign of Caligula are notable – in an overall fairly gory series – for some of the most brutal and shocking scenes in the production. In episode 8, Caligula has incestuously impregnated his sister, and, convinced that the child will be a greater god than himself, cuts open her womb to kill – and it is implied, eat – the foetus. The scene caused concern even before it was transmitted, and the episode had several re-edits before the head of �� drama serials, Bill Slater, was satisfied – even then the master tape was edited again afterwards, so that the original, slightly nastier version of the scene no longer exists.

In the following episode, Caligula’s tyranny and irrational behaviour increasing, and having appointed his horse a senator, a conspiracy arises to assassinate him – and the whole imperial family. However, though Caligula is bloodily struck down, the Praetorian Guard find a terrified Claudius hiding in the palace, and make him emperor, quite against his will.

All other candidates having been eliminated, the Praetorian Guard decide Claudius, who doesn't want the job, should be emperor (if only all leadership candidates were like that)

The rest of the series shows the progress of Claudius’s reign (the narrative is now adapted from Claudius the God), once he has been persuaded by his friend Herod (yes, that Herod) that he needs to accept the throne in order to stay alive. He still wants to return Rome to the Republic, but finds it harder than he thought. Meanwhile, his wife Messalina, who he was forced to marry by Caligula, is gaining a reputation for extreme decadence, with orgies and infidelities that are causing resentment against Claudius.

Again just in time, the conspiracy is revealed to the emperor and Claudius is disillusioned again. At the conclusion of the series, Claudius is nearing the end of his life, and having led the conquest of Britain has become ironically successful. He has married his niece in an attempt to finally convince the Roman people to reject monarchy, by showing how corrupt an institution it is. His own son, however, tells him that no-one want the Republic to return.

Claudius eventually allows himself to be poisoned, and although dead, converses with the prophetic Sybil who predicted his fate (as seen in the first episode). She tells him of what will become of Nero, and Claudius realises he is powerless to shape history in his idealistic way, but that things will, in a way, sort themselves out.

I, Claudius, which has an epic sweep despite being produced entirely on video in Television Centre studios, does bear up to repeated viewings, even if its production standards now seem primitive (but then they probably always did – though when Sian Philips was visited at the �� by her then husband, Peter O’Toole, starring in a rival Roman epic, he was impressed by the quality of the ��’s Roman armour compared to the second-rate costumes his film was using.)

It was usual for Classic Serials on ��2 to be given two showings in the week of their first transmission, but I, Claudius was repeated another two times in the next two years (including, again like The Forsyte Saga, a showing on ��1, to far higher audiences), with another outing in 1986 to commemorate Robert Graves who had died the previous December. Further repeats came on ��4 in 2006, making it one of the most frequently re-run of all archive programmes.

The finished series was recognised in the following year’s BAFTA awards, with Jacobi, Phillips and set designer Tim Harvey being honoured; Herbert Wise also later received an Outstanding Contribution award. I, Claudius has been consistently highly regarded by successive generations and in industry polls.

When rehearsals of I, Claudius got underway, at first the actors were not sure what to make of the scripts, and struggled to get the key to the story. The vital clue that enabled the cast to get the nub of the piece was given to them by Graves – that it is an Italian family saga, where power is the key, and people will do anything to get it and ruthlessly hold on to it. Don’t think Roman Empire – think the Mafia.

Foreshadowing The Sopranos, I, Claudius also gave rise to a mini-wave of �� historical sagas such as The Devil's Crown, The Borgias and The Cleopatras, with varying success... but tell us which is your favourite. And if you haven't seen I, Claudius, it's available on �� Store

The Sunday Post: Classically Russian

2016-01-31T10:00:00+00:00

Anthony Hopkins broods as Pierre Bezuhov in the 1972 War and Peace. This look was all the rage at the time.

The success of the current production of War and Peace on �� One made us think of all the other adaptations of classic Russian novels which have been featured on the �� over the years.

There has of course been no shortage of adaptations of novels on radio and television, but for some reason Russian ones have a particular attraction – I suppose there is a touch of the exotic about a country that straddles Europe and Asia, that is like us and yet not.

War and Peace was first adapted for �� TV in 1972, in a 20-episode version by Jack Pulman (who also dramatised I, Claudius in 1976, and Crime and Punishment in 1979). The lavish production was broadcast on ��2, part of the long running strand of classic adaptations on the channel.

The cast was headed by Anthony Hopkins as Pierre, and Morag Hood as Natasha, who proved to be a controversial choice in a notoriously difficult role, as she was relatively unknown. Other well-known faces included Rupert Davies (of Maigret fame), Alan Dobie, Joanna David, and a young Colin Baker in one of his first television parts, as Anatole Kuragin.

The battle scenes were impressively realised, filmed on location in Yugoslavia, and involved borrowing a contingent of the Yugoslav army to act as the various Napoleonic-era armies. �� Visual Effects designers provided numerous explosions and dismembered corpses, and a huge array of costumes and props had to be found.

As tribute to the pains taken all round, a Radio Times special was published (one of several issued to tie-in with prestigious series in the early 70s). The first showing of the production was also plugged in a special preview programme, and a documentary about Tolstoy. In 1975 the serialisation was re-edited into nine feature-length episodes for a repeat showing in the summer months.

This production was preceded by only a couple of years by another 20-part version, this time on Radio 4, starting on 30 December 1969. The first dramatised version was during the Second World War, beginning on 17 January 1943, where it was broadcast in eight hour-long episodes. Its stars were Leslie Banks as Pierre and Celia Johnson as Natasha.

Sean Connery tries out the painstakingly authentic Russian accent he will later use in The Hunt for Red October.

Tolstoy’s other great work Anna Karenina, like War and Peace, was first broadcast as a radio drama, with versions in 1947 and 1958. It was made into a 1961 television play, produced by Rudolph Cartier (of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Quatermass fame). A pre-Bond Sean Connery was cast as Vronsky, with Claire Bloom as Anna. Television revisited the novel in 1977, in a 10-part classic serial dramatised by Donald Wilson (who had The Forsyte Saga among his credits). The leads here were Nicola Pagett and Stuart Wilson. As with a number of �� dramas of the 70s, there was an exhibition of the costumes at Longleat House.

Among the work of other Russian writers, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was dramatised by Jack Pulman in three episodes in 1979, starring John Hurt. It had first been broadcast as a television play in 1953, with Kenneth Griffith in the lead, and the most recent television production was aired in 2002, with John Simm as Raskolnikov. Radio versions were broadcast on Radio 3 in 1975 in the World Drama strand, and in 2000. A different take on the story was presented in the David Farr play Crime and Punishment in Dalston in 2002 on Radio 3.

The Brothers Karamazov, another of Dostoevsky’s novels, was the subject of an early ��2 serial in 1965, in the days when many of such productions were made in the ��’s Glasgow studios. Ironically they could not be seen in Scotland, as ��2 did not start transmitting there until 11 June 1966. This production sadly no longer exists, apart from a clip which was used in a feature on Dostoevsky in the ��2 arts series Review in 1971. Two different dramatisations of the novel were heard on Radio 4 in 1989 and 2006.

Dostoevsky’s The Idiot was also produced for ��2 in Glasgow, and was shown in early 1966; it was also adapted for Radio 4 in 1978 and 2002. His story The Gambler was adapted in a two-part version by John Hopkins, in an early colour production on ��2 in February 1968. Another version was made for the Open University in 1980.

Among other Russian novelists of the 19th Century, Turgenev is best known for one of his plays, A Month in the Country, but also wrote novels including Fathers and Sons, adapted for radio in 1950, and the source of the play Spring at Marino which was televised in 1951. ��2 mounted a four-part adaptation in 1971, starring Anthony Bate, and there was a further radio production in 1980.

Adaptations of works by Gogol include his short story The Overcoat, which was originally dramatised for the Empire Service, repeated on the National Programme in February 1938. The first television production of a Gogol story was The Gamblers (not to be confused with Dostoevsky’s The Gambler), adapted as a farce by Harold Bowen in 1939. There was another version of this in 1952, with the action transferred to Cork.

The War Doctor, sorry Raskolnikov, as played by John Hurt in the 1979 Crime and Punishment.

There have been other adaptations of these and other works by the same and other Russian authors, as well as productions of Russian plays and readings of novels and stories. As mentioned at the beginning, there is a certain fascination with Russian literature, perhaps second only to French among the non-English speaking countries, which is a testament to the country’s artistic heritage.

Adapting novels - especially foreign works - for broadcast is a specialised skill. Not every television writer possesses the skills needed, which include elements of literary appreciation and criticism, as well as the ability to write compelling drama. But the way in which the ethos and atmosphere of a great novel can be interpreted into a script is not an inflexible technique. Obviously the mass of information in a novel is in the form of prose, and words have to be changed into pictures.

The craft of the adapter is to preserve the flavour and mood of the original work, as well as the plot and dialogue. However it is a rare adaptation that does not take some liberties with the source text, and it has to be remembered that a film, television or radio version is not the same as the original material, nor should it try to be.

Andrew Davies, who adapted the current version of War and Peace, of course has a track record going back over 20 years, after a successful career writing original television scripts such as A Very Peculiar Practice.

Like his predecessor Jack Pulman, he is able to create compelling popular television from the source novel he’s working on, but does it in an arguably more radical way – he is reported as having torn a copy of the novel in two, partly for ease of use, but also to make the gesture that he was not going to be constrained in the way he adapted it. Of course in the case of foreign language novels there is the additional filter of the translator, and not surprisingly it is very rare for that function to also be performed by the adapter.

Adaptations of classic novels have come, gone and returned as a popular inspiration for television and radio drama. When ��2 began in the sixties there was a conscious attempt to tackle material that had been neglected. There had previously been a tendency for classic adaptations to concentrate on English novels such as those of Dickens, Jane Austen and Trollope, with very little adventurous material. Every so often producers rediscover the attractions of the classics, and they are reinvented for a new age with appropriate fanfares.

There is an argument that adapting the classics brings them to audiences who would not have considered reading the novels, and might now be tempted to. Alternatively, people will at least have some idea of the content and themes of a novel by having seen an adaptation. At another level, these programmes involve stories with great characters, and there is the opportunity to bring a historical era to life. That can be educational or escapist, depending how you take it.

What do you think of historical novel adaptations? Do you have a particular fondness for Russian works, or prefer a Dickens or an Austen? Would you prefer something grittier, modern and British? Let us know in the space below.

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The Sunday Post: I, Claudius

The Sunday Post: Classically Russian

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