One of my all time favorites.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

History? Only the imperial machinations around the throne. Drama? Plotting and counter-plotting spoken around a room. Acting? It's only great if you're impressed by good posture and enunciation. (I was impressed by this Livia, her steely determinism)No, history for me to be effective in a lasting sense has to surround the lived atmosphere. This is stagebound artifice around the supposed events. There's no life here, only staging about staging. It's a Roman Days of Our Lives with the only lofty difference that the actors impersonate historical persons and the same tempestuous games about power are enacted in costume and sandals.

Saw this first of all as a 16-year old. As really wanted to know who Derek Jacobi was in Henry V as the Chorus. As he is the lead in this role. Really top class top notch acting! As the stammering but really smart and intelligent lead role. For he sees everybody in his family and the reign of Rome falter in his life and we see everything from his point of view.For Claudius is told that he needed to act dumb as much as it hurts him to in order to survive in Rome. He is the only "normal" one in his family full of schemers and traitors.Supporting Jacobi is Sian Phillips as his ruthless grandma, John Hurt as the mad crazed Caligua, Brian Blessed as Phillips clueless husband, Margaret Tyrius as Claudius mean spirited mom, among others that support him.Great and skilled writing and really shows you how ruthless Rome was in those days.

One of the true masterpieces of British television, I Claudius is very theatric in style and production and relies on a limited amount of backgrounds and on no-too-convincing makeup effects, but the acting and dialog are so good that none of it matters, and the story recreates Roman high society so well, it's very easy to forget just how much like a theater stage the sets look.I Claudius is a perfect adaptation of Robert Graves' fantastic novel. Just like the novel, its accuracy as a historical document is dubious at best - the novel was a fictional presentation of emperor Claudius' fictional autobiography, and made its own speculations on many of the events depicted, and the series does the same; Cladudius, believed by many historians to have been a barely competent, half-witted, and often cruel and violent leader, is in Graves' account the wisest and most sane man in the Roman empire; considering the fact that the story is presented from his viewpoint, though, that actually makes a lot of sense. Anyway, it doesn't matter much, because the depiction of Roman life and politics is incredibly effective and compelling, and very informative too, as long as you take it with a pinch of salt.The cast is perfect too, and it breathes life and energy into what might have become, with lesser actors, a slowly-moving and difficult watch, turning it into a compelling and involving drama. Some of the UK's finest actors start out here, and some experienced TV actors make standout roles; for some it's the role of a career. Brian Blessed, George Baker and John Hurt are fantastic and unforgettable as emperors Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula respectively. Hurt and Blessed are wonderfully over the top, while George Baker gives what is arguably the most subtle and best performance of the series; also fantastic are the very young (with hair!) Patrick Stewart, and of course Sian Phliips as the ambitious and ruthless Livia.Then there's Derek Jacobi as Claudius - the role that made his career. Jacobi is endearing and impressive as the emperor, and he completed the PR makeover that Robert Graves started from him years before, turning him into the most popular Roman emperor in contemporary times. The series' main flaw though, is that it compresses the whole of the second novel - the period of Claudius' days as emperor - into barely three episodes, which means that many of his accomplishments are skipped, while a lot more emphasis is put on his failure at family life and on his superstitious nature, making his reign seem like the lowest possible point of his life. It's forgivable, though, because that means that Blessed, Baker and Hurt get much more screen time, and let's face it - bad emperors are much more interesting than good ones.

"I, Claudius" was the most tedious TV series of my childhood. It promised a lot, and delivered nothing, to satisfy my childhood expectations. No land battles, no naval clashes, no chariot races, not even a sword fight, for Mars' sake! In fact, you didn't even get to see the sky! It was a show in which people dressed like Romans moved about indoors, talked, laughed, sometimes screamed and sometimes got killed in dramatic scenes that lasted only 5 to 10 seconds, and then moved and talked more. Yet, this BBC production, set in the early decades of Roman Empire, had my parents, elder siblings and our relatives and neighbours, most of whom were from Kurdish country-side, glued to their television sets week after week, and talking about the characters and plot twists day after day.For the next thirty years, each time I heard about "I, Claudius", I was torn between the almost traumatic claustrophobia that the series left on my memory and the ever growing curiosity to find out the story that enthralled my childhood elders. In the last fifteen years, I hired "I, Claudius" from the video store twice, and returned them after watching only the first 15 minutes, still unimpressed.Then, it happened. Three weeks ago, bereft of choice in the video store, I again hired the DVDs, promising myself that I'd watch no less than the first hour, no matter what. Well, I ended up watching the 650 minute saga three times, back to back in nine days. I watched nothing else on TV for nine days; no news, no sport, no music clip. It was "I, Claudius" and me; I was happy. I even signed up to IMDb to write about it.The series showcases the mother of all internal family conflicts. The Roman Empire features like a family business that the dynasty is quarreling over. If you are not a 'fool' like Claudius, you are either killed or banished. Power kills, and absolute power... well, you know what it does. By the time young Marcellus stands up in the Arena and says "Let the games begin!" (at around 30-minute mark), you know you'll be glued to the TV for a long time, and say, "What a story!" at the end.This is TV at its best. The story, the script, acting, direction, camera angles, sets, costumes, they are all flawless. Close up shots of the faces are unmatched except perhaps by those in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. The series is teeming with memorable quotes (Augustus to an orator: "What gifts you Greeks have"; Tiberius about her mother Livia: "They say a snake bit her once and died"; Tiberius' astrologer: "Excellent! I knew it. It's all here. The chart doesn't lie." Claudius to Caligula: "You set the standard of sanity for the whole world"). There are many laugh-out-loud scenes in the series. Augustus Caesar walking before and questioning an endless line of men that has slept with his daughter is unforgettable. Claudius saluting the crowd in the arena and sitting in Caesar's chair is a calculated 'foolishness', yet still hilarious. Augustus' speech to Rome's bachelors, Messelina's competition with a prostitute, Claudius and his ordeal with his very tall wife, and many many others. In fact, there were many more comic scenes than tragic ones.It is impossible to praise individual performances. It is as though just under the characters' competition for supremacy in the Roman Empire, there is another, an invisible competition among the actors to win the hearts of the audience as the best character performer. And just the way Claudius is pulled behind a curtain and declared an emperor against his will, one feels like pulling out Derek Jacobi from the pack and declare him the best actor. Just like Claudius understates his intelligence, Jacobi understates his presence in the company of others, giving them the floor with minimum interference. He never seeks to dominate the screen until he's chosen as the Caesar. He has plenty of screen time by himself as the narrator.Only one downside. A technical one. The sound in the DVD recording was inconsistent, sometimes loud sometimes low volume.Do yourself a favour and watch "I, Claudius". You won't regret it. 10/10