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 4
"What Shall We Do About Claudius?"
Original Airdate: Oct. 4, 1976
Writer: Jack Pulman (based on the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves)
Director: Herbert Wise
Cast: Derek Jacobi, Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, Patricia Quinn, John Castle, James Faulkner, George Baker, Margaret Tyzack, David Robb, Donald Eccles
To accurately describe the world is to sound insane. That's the dilemma facing observers of America's collapsing empire today. The corruption is so naked, the incompetence so comical, the sheer evil so gleeful and unrepentant, that describing the situation to others makes you come across as badly undermedicated. There's an old saw that goes around lefty political spaces saying that when you explain Republican policies in black and white for people, they simply won't believe you. Surely, no one could be that psychopathically cruel for so long and just get away with it.
Postumus Agrippa (John Castle) lives in a world that's similarly askew. The dark secret at its center is right there in his own name: He's the son who was born to the legendary war hero Marcus Agrippa posthumously. Why did Marcus Agrippa die, and his rival Marcellus before him? What of Postumus' late brothers, Gaius and Lucius? Did the solitary exile of his mother Julia have a reason behind it beyond her infidelities? And what of Drusus, ally to the Republic, son of Empress Livia, and father of Postumus' best friend, the twitching, limping, stuttering Claudius?
The answer has been obvious to us in the audience all along: Livia Drusilla is behind it all. She's behind the deaths of Marcus, Marcellus, Gaius, Lucius, and Drusus, plus the exile of Livia, and as of now the exile of Postumus for attempting to rape Claudius' married sister, the gorgeous Livilla (Patricia Quinn, aka Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show). In this very episode we see Livia confront Livilla about the affair, then half-cajole, half-blackmail the younger woman into keeping it up long enough to frame Postumus. She'll do anything, stop at nothing, to ensure her son Tiberius is next on the throne.
But try telling this to Augustus, the greatest man in the history of the known world. He's not such a bad guy, as far as it goes, but he's not a person accustomed to being told he's wrong. (By anyone but Livia, that is.) Now he's been told that his beloved wife is responsible for the death or disappearance of half a dozen people he adored, including no fewer than five planned successors to the throne, plus the mother of three of them.
"For years, everyone around you has either died or disappeared. Do you think it was all an accident?" Well, you'd want to, wouldn't you? Would you choose to accept the horrible truth? Or would you go on clinging to the world as you knew it, believing in your heart that it could never really change? We know how our own elites have reacted; Augustus reacts little differently.
It's a brilliant narrative maneuver by screenwriter Jack Pulman, working off the novels by Robert Graves. Here we have the moment we've all been waiting for: Finally, someone exposes Livia as the serial killer she is to the only man who can do anything about it. But even as it's happening, we know nothing will come of it, because unless you've been watching through the BBC's cameras, there's no way you'd accept Postumus' word for it, not when he's trying to save his own skin in the process.
Director Herbert Wise positions Livia in the background for all this, and actor Siân Phillips renders her as both motionless and seemingly emotionless. She knows this guy can't touch her. She's confident nobody can. Needless to say, this is the moment where I became very, very invested in this lunatic's downfall.
There's much more to say about this fascinating episode, because in effect, it's the debut of the title character. For the first time, an adult Claudius — seen here at around 18 or 19, if my math is right — is a part of the action, not just an elderly reminiscer and narrator at the beginning and end of each episode.
Claudius is smart, that much is clear from the start. When he's not reading a book, he's writing one. He's able to offer substantive literary critiques to two of the time's leading historians and banter easily with his circle of close friends: his soldierly brother, Germanicus (David Robb); his best friend, Postumus; and Herod (James Faulkner), the charming young Jewish king who's been a ward of Caesar's for some time. They're not perfect — this is a funny thing to say, but I was particularly disappointed in King Herod for laughing at a joke at Claudius' expense at the end of the episode — but in the main, this crew recognizes that Claudius is both intelligent and trustworthy.
The older generation doesn't see him that way. His mother Antonia and grandmother Livia both view him with disdain they don't bother to hide. Even Augustus, who at least is nice to the younger man, assumes that his wife is right (as he usually does) and that Claudius won't amount to anything. The episode is driven in part by an extensive debate over whether or where to place Claudius in the imperial box at the gladiatorial games being held in his own father's honor. (He winds up passing out from the violence after doing a comical pratfall while sitting down at any rate.) The whole time, his mom and grandma treat him like a stranger with an infectious disease. To them, he's beneath contempt.
Which is the best place for him, really. Both Postumus, who briefly escapes from his arresting guards to tell Claudius the truth about Livia and the murders, and Pollio (Donald Eccles), one of the historians Claudius chats with, warn the young man to play the fool if he wants to stay alive. As long as Livia doesn't see him as a threat, his life is safe. It's why he can get away with accidentally sitting in the imperial seat and receiving a massive ovation from the crowd in response. It's just Claudius, what harm could he do?
But the price for safety is public debasement. In the scene that ends the episode, Claudius arrives at his wedding ceremony and meets his bride (Jennifer Croxton) for the first time … discovering that she towers a full foot above him. Even Augustus and Herod join in the raucous laughter that results from the humiliating mismatch. We've certainly never seen Livia whoop it up before, but there she is, laughing like she just saw The Naked Gun (2025).
Jacobi, who you can already tell recognizes what a gift he's been given in this role, plays up Claudius' tic, stammer, and limp around others as per instructions; however, you see from the reactions of decent characters that he's still no figure of fun. For a guy as sharp as Claudius — for anyone, really — this kind of condescension and unkindness must be unbearable.
The unbearable is where I, Claudius thrives, from irresistible passion to inconsolable terror. This episode combines both in the person of Livilla, a breakout character if ever there was one. We're introduced to her when she's making bedroom eyes at Postumus during a family dinner, despite the fact that she's married to none other than Tiberius' son, Castor (Kevin McNally). But since he's often out on the town carousing, she's free to hook up with Postumus, who's known even to Augustus to be something of a rake.
Their romance is really something to behold. Castle, who had a memorable guest spot as Number 12 in the Prisoner episode "The General," has real chemistry with Quinn, who's extraordinarily lovely when she doesn't look like the erotic Bride of Frankenstein. (She's hot then too, but that's different.) After a passionate, open-mouthed kiss, he picks her up and lays her down in bed, then kisses her hip, her waist, squeezes her breast. This man is into this woman, and it shows on screen.
Unfortunately, this makes him the perfect patsy, as he'd never suspect Livilla of setting him up on a false rape accusation. It's all done at the behest of Livia, of course, who otherwise would have exposed the affair and had Livilla exiled right alongside Postumus. Why doesn't the older woman just go ahead and do that, I wonder, given that it would be easier and not involve a co-conspirator, as her plan to frame Postumus does? I suspect it's because she sees something in Livilla, either a weapon to be harnessed or a protégée whose work she's eager to watch. I don't think it's a healthy alliance for Rome regardless.
As usual, Caesar himself is mostly a bystander to all this history, a captain standing proud at the prow, oblivious to the frantic work of everyone actually piloting and powering the ship. When summarizing the plot, it's easy to leave him out almost entirely, except when he finally drops the hammer on someone after being manipulated into doing so by Livia, as he does on Postumus here.
But in this episode, he drops something else entirely: a bar for the ages.
"QUINCTILIUS VARUS, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES???"
You have to say it in your best Brian Blessed, you know? This is Augustus' cri de cœur after three of his legions are completely wiped out in the forests of Germany. Yes, it leaves Rome's provinces in Gaul wide open to attack, at least until Tiberius and Germanicus set things straight. (Livia counsels Augustus into not sending Postumus on account of his rivalry with Tiberius; she's right about that, but she of course has other plans for Postumus entirely.) But more importantly for our purposes, it means that each legion's standard, in the shape of an eagle, has been taken by the enemy. And by all the gods, Augustus wants them back.
Even as the Emperor obsesses on symbols of his power, that power is being usurped, bit by bit, year after year, murder after murder, exile after exile. Who really runs Rome, anyway?
We get our answer in the gladiator pits. Livia herself heads down to the depths to address the fighters in the gladiator guild, but it's the worst pep talk I've ever heard; "You're all scum, and you know it" is one of the nicer things she says to them. And boy, is she mad that they've figured out ways not to get slaughtered out there on the battlefield. "These games are being degraded by the increasing use of professional tricks to stay alive, and I won't have it!"
The scene, which features Siân Phillips in full imperial regalia berating a room full of half-naked Roman gladiators, is an absolute scream, that much is obvious. By now Phillips appears fully comfortable with the fact that her character is more or less just a real piece of work, and she makes a meal of things accordingly.
But it's worth keeping in mind that this bloody-minded martinet is, effectively, ruling Rome. We've seen her easily manipulate Augustus into taking her military advice, a sphere in which she's not supposed to meddle nor even have any interest in doing so. And we've seen her eliminate one chosen successor to the throne after another, shaping the course of the Empire for untold decades to come. All this from a woman who's legitimately pissed off at gladiators for not dying more often. No good can come of this.
