Ask a dozen people what they consider to be the ‘Golden Age of Television’, and you will most likely end up getting a dozen different opinions.
A standard answer to the question tends to be the era of live television drama broadcasts from 1947 to the early 1960s. Others may consider our current era of streaming services to be a high point in television history, and a new ‘Golden Age’, replete with prestige dramas. For some, it tends to relate to the period of your formative years being spent growing up in front of the box, nostalgia hanging heavy in all those wistful looks back to the shows of your childhood and adolescence. It does beg the question as to whether there could ever be a definitive answer to that seemingly imponderable – as well as, arguably, subjective – conundrum.
After all, debates have raged over the years as to what was the greatest year for cinema, with many different options being proffered. Some have tried to break it down by genre, with 1982 being put forward as a seminal year for science fiction flicks. Academics, scholars and enthusiasts will argue the toss about that almost endlessly, and cinema – much like television – contains multitudes. But could one hope to ever pin down a definitive, halcyon year for television? Well, there could be a compelling argument to roll the clocks back exactly half a century, to the time of punk rock’s birth, the US bicentennial celebration, Concorde’s first commercial flight, the founding of Apple, and a brutal heatwave: 1976.
Based upon Robert Graves’ two novels first published in the mid-1930s – I, Claudius and Claudius The God – the BBC’s 12-part serial would tell the bloody and scandalous story of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the first Imperial family of the Roman Empire. Told from the perspective of Claudius (Derek Jacobi), looking back as he writes his family’s history, we get to see the unfolding of schemes and scandals as his relatives vie to obtain ultimate supremacy. Over the course of almost 11 hours of television, the nation watched an epic saga which spanned several decades of history unfolding in the corner of their living rooms. For three months, all roads led to Rome – via Shepherd’s Bush.
It was not the first time efforts had been made to translate I, Claudius from the page to the screen – back in 1937, just two years after the publication of Claudius The God, Alexander Korda’s London Films mounted what ended up an ultimately ill-fated attempt to make a feature film version of Graves’ books, starring Charles Laughton in the title role. However, it was plagued by problems, including actress Merle Oberon being injured in a car crash which halted production. So ill-fated proved the project, it gave Graves cause to proclaim – semi-seriously – that there was a curse which would doom any endeavours to bring Claudius’ story to the screen. It was to be a further four decades – and lots of legal wrangling – before the BBC would take their chances at doing just that, only this time for television.
This would not, however, be the first time the subject matter had been on the small screen: in 1968, northern ITV regional franchisee Granada would produce The Caesars, an eight-part series, which – while not being an adaptation of Graves’ Claudius works – would cover roughly the same period of history, starting from the reign of Augustus Caesar, ending with staunch Republican Claudius reluctantly ending up as Emperor, through a twist of fate. Written and produced by Philip Mackie (whose granddaughter Pearl would be cast as companion Bill Potts in Doctor Who), The Caesars would end up in relative obscurity, except for a 2006 release on DVD by Network Distributing, largely by dint of it having been made in black-and-white.
At the time, colour television was still a relative novelty in the UK, with the first broadcast not taking place until July 1967, with BBC 2’s coverage of Wimbledon. ITV only began its colour transmissions in November 1969, with just about half the population living within the range of colour signals. No wonder then, that The Caesars gave us a monochrome vision of Imperial Rome, sadly limiting its repeat potential in later years. Fortunately, by the time that I, Claudius actually came to fruition in 1976, the number of colour TV licences – first launched in January 1968 – overtook black-and-white ones that same year for the first time. Even so, it meant only about 9 million households would be able to see I, Claudius in all its glory (and, also, gory – the amount of blood shed on screen would be somewhat diminished if not able to be seen as intended in its vivid hues).
Nowadays, living in an age in which big budget international co-productions seem de rigueur, bringing historical settings to life would usually involve some overseas location filming or lavish exterior sets, such as at Cinecittà Studios in Italy, where the standing set which was specially constructed for HBO and BBC’s series Rome is now a visitor attraction. Just like its predecessor The Caesars, however, the production of I, Claudius would be studio-based, in Londinium’s Centrum Televisionis. Although it was allocated a purse of £720,000 (which would today be just over £5 million), there would be no jaunts overseas for the production of I, Claudius – the BBC’s depiction of Ancient Rome would be less the Eternal City, and more White City.
However, the production team still managed to make the sets look lavish, with designer Tim Harvey making every penny count on screen, and deservedly picking up a 1978 Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Art Direction for his work on the series. Whereas modern series would tend to be made on film (or at least given a filmic look in post-production) in order to give them a cinematic feel, in the case of I, Claudius being made in studio on videotape with the multi-camera setup common to BBC’s Television Centre – as well as being typical of TV production of the era – it gives both an intimacy and theatricality which is lacking in many modern television series.
A combination of director Herbert Wise’s meticulous staging and Jim Atkinson’s camerawork bring the audience right into the very heart of proceedings, giving extra life both to Jack Pulman’s script and the performances. Oh, and what a cast Wise managed to assemble here, with so many now-familar names: besides Jacobi as Claudius, we get career-defining performances from the likes of Brian Blessed as Augustus and Siân Phillips as his wife, the scheming and manipulative Livia; Patrick Stewart as the ruthless Sejanus; Patricia Quinn as Livilla; George Baker as Tiberius; Christopher Biggins as the supposed pyromaniac Nero; and John Hurt giving his all as the deranged and maniacal Caligula.
In order to help the players find the right tone and rhythm for their performances, they were told to play it as though the Imperial family were the Mafia – an ironic choice given that the Mafia family drama The Sopranos, often cited by critics as signifying the birth of a new ‘Golden Age’ for TV, was itself influenced by I, Claudius, including the matriarch being named Livia. In fact, the huge sway of I, Claudius is felt throughout various subsequent television productions, from Succession to – of all things – the ‘80s soap opera Dynasty. Some of the tone and content – from devious materfamilias to the court intrigues, bloodletting and incest – may seem familiar to fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novel series, as adapted for TV in Game of Thrones, and Martin has gone on record as ranking it “one of the greatest television series ever made”.
It seems a particular twist of irony that in the very same year the BBC first adopted Roman numerals for copyright dates in its end credits, it only used regular numbers for I, Claudius. With 2026 marking its golden anniversary, we recently got treated to a Roman holiday back to MCMLXXVI, all thanks to BBC Four giving the series another airing, and with all the episodes currently on BBC iPlayer, what better time than now to indulge in the televisual feast that is I, Claudius. Just don’t touch the figs.