In 1983 the BBC tried to recapture some of the magic that had made I, Claudius such a success in the previous decade. What they came up with was The Cleopatras, a miniseries that follows the last hundred or so years of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, with a script by Philip Mackie.
Mackie’s novelisation is a fairly straightforward translation of the teleplay into a novel. Actually I’d go further and say it looks very much like he took the dialogue from the script, added quotation marks around it, and sent it to his publisher. The novel has next to no description and is largely static dialogue hanging in the air. This is disappointing. The miniseries itself was a mess too, although it was hard to say exactly why. Often a decent script is just not served by a poor production and editing. In those situations the novelisation is the author’s chance to show people how good their vision was and redeem themselves for the series’ mistakes. All the quality source material could have been spun into a marvellous novel, but Mackie has pretty well proved that his writing was one of the many wrong ingredients in the miniseries.
While there were some fun aspects to both the miniseries and the novel, characterisation and plotting are not Mackie’s strong points. The comparison with Robert Graves’ I, Claudius is unfortunate as Graves excelled at both. It’s tempting to call that comparison unfair (Who can compare with Robert Graves?), but The Cleopatras invites the comparison because it appears to have been formulated with I, Claudius in mind.
As a side note, and in Mackie’s defence, all the male members of the Ptolemaic dynasty were called Ptolemy and the women were all called Cleopatra. It must have been monstrously difficult to write a novel where all the characters have the same names. It is entertaining to watch Mackie struggle with the task and come up with some ingenious ways around the problem, although I can’t say that he ever really comes up with a satisfactory solution.
The miniseries was a mess too, and it’s not all Mackie’s fault. The concept was not served by the bizarre editing choices and some truly wacky electric Irish rock music. You have a young Richard Griffiths in one of the main roles, though, so we’re not looking at a dearth of acting talent. The Beeb also didn’t skimp on the sets or costumes, which are lavish and (to my untrained eye) a not unreasonable approximation of what the Ptolemaic court and courtiers may have looked like. I did spot some abuse of the “nemes” headdress, but largely the shaved heads, the wigs, and the “sidelock of youth” were fairly true to life. One of the fundamental problems, though, is that whereas ancient Rome tends to look somewhat noble and stately to us, ancient Egyptian hair styles and costumes do not carry the same dignity in our eyes. Getting a bunch of talented English actors, shaving them bald, giving them heavy makeup, and making them dress in skimpy costumes was never going to play out on the screen with the same gravitas as a toga-based drama.
Ultimately I’d suggest watching the miniseries for the fun of it (if you can find it — it’s never been rebroadcast or released on home media) but you can safely skip the novel.