Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6762 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-04-03
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 300 minutes

Customer Reviews

About as good as it gets
If you want to understand something of the exercise of power in the early Roman Empire, this is for you.

Having seen "The Caesars" when I was at school, I could not understand the swooning praise heaped on the Derek Jacobi (who was about the best thing in it) "I Claudius" which is overwhelmingly superficial, inaccurate and a kind of infantile, tabloid version of the far better novels by Robert Graves (who had a sense of humour though tyou wouldn't guess it from this travesty).

The real Augustus, to take just one example, was physically slight, intellectually subtle and personally formidable so casting Brian Blessed (of all people - was it some kind of grotesque joke?) in that role in "I Claudius" was grotesquely wrong. Roland Culver was an infinitely better choice.

This was a series about the realities of power in any period - and rather closely followed the surviving record of the sophisticated and lurid Roman historian Suetonius.
Of course, the B&W picture is sometimes rather dodgy but it is probably as good as we will get - and TV production was pretty rough in 1968 compared to today's digitalised everything and spectacular nothingness.

The writing and acting are still amazingly good.

Not so...great

I am a huge fan of the I CLAUDIUS series and the series which i'm reffering now has nothing to do with the great 1976 bbc series.
True, they describe the lives of the caesars in a nice way and the actors were excellent but something went wrong.
First of all the picture quality in this dvd is horrible. second sejanus and germanicus were not caesars and finally augustus and claudius were ignored for the most part.
What we have here actually is a full report about the reigns of tiberius and caligula together with the complete lives of germanicus and sejanus BUT augustus and claudius had a very little screening time and their whole reign were ignored except for the last years of augustus.
The episodes with caligula were very disturbing and overall though the series were not so bad they are not so good either and most important they are AGES BEHIND THE SUPERB "I CLAUDIUS" 1976 SERIES.
I Recommend these 1960 series ONLY to the die hard "roman empire" fans.

Politics and Murder in Imperial Rome
Rome 14 AD. Augustus (Roland Culver) has been Emperor for 40 years. In his youth he had put an end to 100 years of civil war - but the price was the end of the Republic. Now he is old and worried about the future. To preserve the Pax Romana he needs to appoint a successor but none of his descendents is suitable. So what should he do? He decides to nominate Tiberius as a stop gap until his great-grandson is old enough, thus creating an Imperial Line.

Unfortunately for Augustus, his family do not live up to his high ideals as they attempt to marry, scheme, plot, and murder their way to the throne. On the way we meet: the handsome but inept Germanicus (Eric Flynn); the scheming Agrippina (Caroline Blakiston); the unwilling but ruthless Tiberius (Andre Morell); the murderous Sejanus (Barrie Ingham); and the downright evil Caligula (Ralph Bates). Watching all this is Claudius (Freddy Jones). Claudius is regarded a s a dimwit because of his club-foot and stutter - but he is the most intelligent of the lot.

The Caesars (1968) was one of the last major series to be made in black and white and is an example of the quality drama made by ITV at it's peak. It consists of six episodes, each concentrating on one of the major players. It was written by Philip Mackie and was highly acclaimed at the time. Freddy Jones was awarded the TV best actor award at Cannes for his portrayal of Claudius. The Caesars is set about 50 years after the mini-series Rome(2005) and covers roughly the same period as I Claudius (1976); although from a different perspective. It is easily the equal to, if not better than, either of these mini-series.

The six episodes are:

(1) Augustus: Who should succeed him?
(2) Germanicus: The legions on the Rhine have risen up and declared for Germanicus. Should he march on Rome or put down the rebellion?
(3) Tiberius: As the number of palace plots multiply, Tiberius needs to become increasingly ruthless.
(4) Sejanus: Tiberius retires to Capri and leaves his trusted friend Sejanus in charge. Sejanus, however, has other plans.
(5) Caligula: Tiberius is dead and Caligula is Emperor. After a serious illness he believes that he is a God.
(6) Claudius: As Caligula becomes more deranged and erratic, can Claudius survive?

This set consists of two DVDs, each containing three 50 minute episodes. The only special feature is on the second DVD and consists of a large collection of colour stills. These stills show the full grandeur of the production and make you wish that it was filmed in colour.

Finally, it should be remembered that The Caesars is 40 years old. It is in black & white, filmed in a studio, and there are no special effects. Most TV work from this period is lost but, thankfully, The Caesars has been preserved in the form of VCR to film archival prints. Unfortunately, this material is not up to the standard of modern DVDs and there is some visible damage. That said, these imperfections are minor, and the shear power of the drama will sweep you along.