In PRESTIGE PREHISTORY, Pop Heist critic Sean T. Collins takes a look at classic TV shows that paved the way for the New Golden Age of Television — challenging, self-contained series from writers and filmmakers determined to push the medium forward by telling stories their own way.
I, Claudius Episode 11
“Fool’s Luck”
Original Airdate: November 22, 1976
Writer: Jack Pulman (based on the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves)
Director: Herbert Wise
Cast: Derek Jacobi, Sheila White, James Faulkner, Lyndon Brook, Moira Redmond, John Bennett, Geoffrey Hinsliff, Bernard Hepton, John Cater, Sam Dastor
In retrospect, there was one clear warning sign. Yes, Messalina, the sweet, beautiful, precociously competent and intelligent teenage girl to whom Claudius was forcibly wed by his demented uncle Caligula, makes the newly crowned emperor happy. Yes, she helps him immeasurably in his work. Yes, she’s the mother of first one, then two children by him. Yes, it seems like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Until she says this: “My darling, I want to be Livia to your Augustus!”
Oh dear.
There’s no reason to believe Messalina has any idea what a psychopath Livia Drusilla truly was — certainly not to the degree Claudius does. As he tells the Senate when he’s forced to address them as Emperor by the armed and dangerous Praetorian Guard who crowned him, living with the imperial family has given him insight into how the rule of Empire really works unmatched by anyone else still living. He knows Livia was a monster, because he heard her confess it with her own lips. I’m sure he thinks Messalina views her simply as the Mother of the Nation and a newly elevated goddess, thanks to his own intervention. (He promised Livia he’d make her a goddess if he could, and Claudius is a man who keeps his word.)
But by the end of this episode, it’s hard to avoid getting the impression that on some level or other, Messalina knows what Livia truly was, and aspires to be that herself. Yes, in the grand scheme of the divine Livia and the doomed Livilla, we have another scheming Roman noblewoman on our hands here, and she makes the others look positively restrained.
The object of all of Messalina’s scheming this episode is Appius Silanus (Lyndon Brook), a handsome older man she knew from when he used to date her mother, Domitia (Moira Redmond). Today, Silanus is both the governor of Spain and one of the few vocal proponents of the Republic left standing. As Claudius is a republican himself, he gladly takes Messalina’s advice and invites Silanus back to Rome, both to marry Domitia and serve as an advisor from the aristocracy after Claudius’ loyal old friend King Herod departs the city.
Herod, however, has one last warning for Claudius before he goes, one last piece of advice before he hangs up his hat as a Jewish one-man Greek chorus, commenting on the foibles and failings of the Julio-Claudians with wit, wisdom, and a healthy serving of jocular cynicism too. His warning is only three words long: “Trust no one.” He repeats it for emphasis. Not friends, not family, not Senators, not soldiers, not children, not even your wife — and, yes, maybe not even Herod himself.
Far-sighted Herod — who you might recall insulting his evil uncle, the murderous biblical Herod, along with all his commentary on the Roman imperials — seems to have instinctively sussed out that something is up with Messalina (derogatory), just as Messalina divined that there was something special about Livia (complimentary).
Earlier in the episode, it’s Herod who convinces Claudius to accept the laurel crown of Empire no matter how much he doesn’t want it; failure to do so would mark him and his entire family for death, whether by Senate republicans, rival would-be emperors, Caligula’s assassins, or the Praetorian Guard themselves. Now he’s issuing an equally dire warning about the danger of trusting the people you care about. Seems to me he should be listened to, as ugly as the sentiment is.
It’s not until Messalina finally gets Silanus alone, in a gauzy, white-columned pleasure chamber that’s one of the show’s most memorable sets, that we fully grasp the depth of her madness.
It’s not ambition that drives Messalina, as it drove Livia and Livilla before her — it’s the crazed whims and desires of her own heart and mind. She tells Silanus she arranged his return from Spain and marriage to her mother so that she could have him.
This comes a few scant minutes of screentime after she convinced Claudius to let her live separately so she doesn’t succumb to his masculine wiles and get knocked up a third time at age 17 — an arrangement she tells Silanus was Claudius’ idea, so he and she could pursue their pleasures and perversions privately.
So effective a liar is Messalina that both men believe her lies, in opposite directions. At first Silanus insists he’ll take her allegations of imperial deviancy directly to Claudius for verification. However, his already dim view of the Caesars — two out of three so far have been world-historical creeps — leads him to believe she’s telling the truth when she says Claudius is in on it.
In the scenes that follow, it’s easy to see how his meeting with Messalina shook Silanus so badly he’s no longer looking at and listening to what’s right in front of him. No sooner does Claudius finish shooting down a bogus plan to build a new all-weather harbor — the survey was rigged by Big Corn, which he realizes and points out to the very people who were involved in the bribery that rigged it — than does Silanus come at him with a knife.
Had Silanus not been so preoccupied with Messalina’s lies, he might have heard his target go to bat for the common people over the rich, in whose interest the harbor is being delayed. Alas, he had a one-track mind.
Now, Claudius has always been a soft touch, so you already know how this is all going to go. The man who couldn’t truly believe his Grandma Livia was a mass murderer until he heard her say so himself is never gonna believe the words of a mere co-worker, however unimpeachable his character until this point, over the words of his wife, who he thinks hung the moon and stars.
Indeed, Messalina puts on a grand show of fear, grief, remorse, you name it — anything to make Silanus look guilty, but make herself look good in the process by pleading for clemency. She forces her mom to back up her bullshit, very explicitly threatening to lie about her, too, if she doesn’t.
So, like Caligula’s killer Cassius Chaerea before him, Silanus is sentenced to death by the one man in Rome least equipped to pass death sentences, and least desirous to do so. Thus we see how absolute power corrupts absolutely, even in the hands of a man who never wanted that power to begin with.
Claudius took that power, though. Even if his reasons were noble, in so doing he lit up the green light for schemers and sociopaths like his wife to manipulate him to their own ends. After all, if what Claudius says is law, imagine the power you have as the woman who tells Claudius what to say!
Do you see the great trick that author Robert Graves and screenwriter Jack Pulman are pulling here? I, Claudius has seen major antagonists come and go — Livia, Livilla, Sejanus, Caligula. The temptation here is to say Messalina is the next in line, and that’s true, but only to a point.
No, the real enemy Claudius is facing in these final episodes is Claudius himself. The republican, forced to perpetuate the Empire. The kind man, whose kindness is now redirected to the wrong people at the expense of those who deserve it more. The fool, whose “fool’s luck,” as Herod puts it, has kept him alive — but who is just as easily made a fool of as he fools others.
There’s a simple moral here. There may be a ravening she-wolf amid the flock now, but the gates were propped open by men who should have known better — first the Senators who relinquished their constitutional power in the wake of Julius and Augusts, then Claudius himself, who ought to have seen how dangerous a weapon he could become if wielded by the wrong hands.
It’s like Claudius’ no-bullshit Greek doctor, Xenophon (John Bennett), puts it: “All important people think they’re indispensable.” Whether you think you’re the messianic savior of the nation or a one-man bulwark against its further corruption, it’s vital to reflect that you are, at bottom, human. You can’t run yourself ragged working. You can’t skate by on a handful of hours’ sleep a night. You can’t allow yourself to become judge, jury, and executioner, no matter how strong the case may seem. There’s no overturning on appeal when your killer is the system personified.
