Follow that snake! Fiona watches 'The Cleopatras' on YouTube

Lurid historical melodrama has returned in a big way.

Following the huge success of 'The Tudors', the powers that be are now in the process of creating 'The Borgias'. 

No-one is sure yet whether this is meant to be a direct remake of the notorious BBC mini-series from the Eighties or more of a lush reimagining for the new millennium.  What we do know is that Ronan Vibert will be playing the son-in-law of the Pope - until he get shafted (in the metaphorical sense, that is) for being impotent (though really he's not, but that's the type of dirty lowdown subterfuge the inlaws have been forced to stoop down to back in the days when there was no such thing as a quickie divorce).

While we wait with breathless anticipation for this never-ending saga of incest, adultery, poisonings and other assorted murders, mayhem and general skullduggery in Renaissance Italy to reach the screen some time next year, now seems as good a time as any to take a look back at its antecedents.

Although Salford University library boasts the full and complete set of 'I Claudius' (in both DVD and VHS formats), the shelves are strangely lacking in anything either Borgia or Cleopatra related.  I haven't been able to find any transcripts for these series anywhere either.

So I've been forced to resort to YouTube.

What a bloody weird place YouTube is.

Yes, 'The Cleopatras' has been uploaded there for all and sundry to watch at their leisure.

But it seems to be a bit like 'Match Of The Day' would be, if it was edited by Ron Manager and had ashen-faced, tight-lipped Ron Knee (59) for the presenter.  Fair enough, if the highlights consisted of Rio Ferdinand scoring a hat-trick in the last 10 seconds of the Cup Final at Wembley.

As far as I can make out, each episode of 'The Cleopatras' must originally have been somewhere between 45 - 60 minutes long.  What you get on YouTube are sequences of around 15 minutes each.

Possibly the person who uploaded them chose these particular ones because their favourite actor appeared in them.

Fair enough - only what about the rest of us who'd like to see how the rest of the episode pans out?

For this and various other reasons which I shall be going into shortly, it is almost impossible to work out what the hell is meant to be going on each week.

I watched all the YouTube segments of episode 2.

The first thing you have to remember is that practically EVERY member of the wretched bunch of treacherous inbreds has the same name.  The women are all called Cleopatra and the men Ptolomey.  In order to tell each other apart, they have to resort to titles and nicknames.

So we had Cleopatra the Grandmother, Cleopatra the Mother and Cleopatra the Daughter (I think?).  Richard Griffiths played the splendidly named Ptolomey Potbelly.

Some woman (Cleo the Daughter?) kept complaining to her (husband?  brother?  son?  This is what the breakdown of traditional values does to family relationships!) that he was far too inclined to keep doing everything his mother told him.  If he wanted to be a tougher, more manly ruler, he needed to start saying no.

Meanwhile, another Cleo (the Mother?  Looks like my Auntie Betty in a wig made out of macrame plant pot holder string, anyway) came to the conclusion that her husband was completely and utterly useless, so she'd be better off without him.

Hubby was called Demetrius and turned out to be portrayed by Stephen Greif in what was meant to be the only reasonably realistic beard in the entire episode.

All the men of any status at any of the courts apparently believed that displaying a huge bushy beard of some description would prove both their masculinity and their high standing.  But because ritual and show were essential to the performance of government, these beards all ended up as very obvious stage props, held on under the chin by gold straps.  The Greeks had golden curly ones, the Egyptians the traditional stiff barbs from the Tutankhamen mummy-case.

Despite being Greek (I think?), Demetrius seemed to be ruling Syria - which may explain both the Assyrian wallcarving effort stuck to the long-suffering Mr G's poor chin and the lashings of black Alice Cooper-style eyeliner he was wearing.

Like the other male aristos, he had then been stuffed into some ill-fitting sausage skin of a linen tunic that created a rather unfortunate moob-effect around the chesticle region.  This was only enhanced by a huge clanking golden pectoral that would probably sell for several hundred pounds in the Prada or Marni stores these days.

You really did end up wondering if the Ancient Egyptians wanted every half-decent looking man at the court to be rendered so effete and decadent in appearance.  If so, then they were obviously doing a great job.

(Also remembered Diana Dors saying that when she appeared in 'Oedipus Rex' at the Chichester Festival, she and her co-stars all looked pretty much like this once they were in costume and fully made up.  One of the men once reduced her to fits of hysterics by announcing that he was just going down the fish shop for some chips - and did she want anything?  Couldn't get over the image in my mind of Demetrius and Potbelly meeting in the queue at The Codfather and Demetrius explaining that he'd just nipped in for a bit of battered flange, to which Potbelly replies that he should really try asking them to slip in a free Saveloy some time ... )

Anyway, Demetrius was so bloody useless that Cleopatra had left him in Syria and gone back to live with her mother in Egypt.

If I've understood this bit correctly, he had apparently (?) fathered several children over the years, including at least two sons, so he can't have been all THAT hopeless.  Problem was that the boys were now old enough to be ruling their own kingdoms - and mum fancied bossing about men who would actually be bothered enough to get up off their arses occasionally and do something she told them.

Due to BBC funding constraints, you didn't really see anything that would show how useless Demetrius was.  He just seemed to sit about on his arse all day while minions fanned him.   So you mostly had to take it on trust.

His mother-in-law decided for some strange reason or other to go and visit him in Syria.  She took all the money from the Egyptian treasuries with her.  She told him that she would give all the gold to him so that he could use it to start a war.

Demetrius agreed that this was a brilliant idea.

However, he took the money and ran - without fighting a single battle, as his estranged wife pointed out.

One Cleopatra (the Grandmother?) then suggested that he took refuge in the temple in Melkart (this is in Egypt, not Syria, and is the same place where Zawi El Hawass reckons Cleopatra and Anthony may have been later buried).

Naturally wifey soon sends a death squad to Melkart, a bloody great chopper is produced and poor Demetrius meets his end at the end of it with an expression much the same as Claudius must have done three seconds after swallowing the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, Potbelly declares that his overriding ambition in life is to become the fattest, most degenerate gutbucket the world has ever seen.  Although everyone laughed at his wit, Griffiths was by far the best looking (and svelte!) bloke to appear in this episode!

Someone had the inspired brainwave of purchasing a slave called Alexander from the market and putting the rumour about that he was some legitimate male claimant's illegitimate son.  It might even have been true.  It didn't matter, as they needed yet another man who was easy to boss about.

Yes, this is ancient feminism - Eighties style.

Men are crap, women rule.

It's just the way of nature, so there's no need to rant and rave about it unduly.