The London Times, September 25 1996

W. Stephen Gilbert dons his toga and goes to the "I, Claudius" party.

Having rinsed out my old toga the night before (that dried blood is so tenacious), I went to a party last week to mark the twentieth anniversary of the first BBC transmission of Robert Graves's "I, Claudius". It was billed as "an orgy of reminiscence".

"To look back is quite an unusual thing for me," says Herbert Wise, who directed the 13 episodes, "and I'm amazed at how well it stands up."

Such a project is unthinkable at the present BBC. All 650 minutes were recorded on videotape in the studio without a single outside shot. The result is that, buoyed up by Tim Harvey's universally hailed sets, the actors go for it in an electrifyingly theatrical way, relishing Jack Pulman's bracing and mordant script.

Made now, "Claudius" would have to be on film, shot where the light was thought Mediterranean and the games and other great set pieces could be "realistically" staged with hundreds of extras, at the expense of dialogue and character. The slow-burn structure---and even Wise admits to having been nervous at the deliberation of the first two episodes---would be out. So too would be any actor like Derek Jacobi, nowhere near starry enough to be entrusted with such a gigantic role. Who would it be today? Whoever, it would not be the director's choice.

"At the time," says Wise, "we didn't know we were making a great epic. You just did a job."

"Claudius" scored a number of firsts, mostly by a mixture of cunning and luck. Wise says: "I was the first director who demanded that I do it all myself," the first also to have the same studio camera crew throughout a long serial, allowing him to develop a close understanding with the late Jim Atkinson. "They don't have the cameramen now," he adds ruefully.

Much of the craft was executed on the wing. Barbara Kronig designed the costumes "Just keep me in touch", said Wise. Kronig, who organised the reunion with script editor Betty Willingale, and Tim Harvey were permitted to go to Rome for research, "to see the perspective and the colours".

Pam Meager's make-up used prosthetics in a new way to age the actors. "We were pushing it," she says. Jacobi's old-age face took six hours. And the financial constraint was fierce. "Tim, Barbara and I each gave back £1,000 at the end because we were under such pressure. I said at the time, the Romans weren't the only ones who got away with murder."

"I, Claudius" reaches back to a make-do-and-mend spirit at the BBC. It had its limitations but it also produced a camaraderie unknown to current programme-makers. John Hurt, whose outrageous Caligula is fondly remembered, declares that "it would be hard to find a show that one had so much fun doing, before or since". "It was like a real company," says Kronig, "a theatre company." Pam Meager remembers there were department heads who led and bolstered the craft services. "There's no one encouraging us now."

As the actors hugged each other, the buffet went untouched (I told Betty Willingale she needed to hire a food-taster, most of her guests having been poisoned in the serial). But they roared and applauded at the tape of extracts Willingale had put together, none louder than Patrick Stewart, who flew in from Los Angeles to see again one of his bewigged performances. He says "Claudius" is aired regularly on cable in the United States, where it has such a huge cult following that he is more readily identified as Sejanus than as Star Trek's Captain Picard.

First on his feet after the screening, Wise cried: "We did have a wonderful script." As the Sybil tells the newly dead Claudius, it was "quite a story, wasn't it".