samkydd

I remember The Borgias, as a strange "in your face" historical drama series and also how it was slated in the press, but I don't know why it got such bad reviews.

I saw a few episodes and thought it was pretty good, especially the evil Cesare played by Oliver Cotton. Adolpho Celi was excellent as Rodrigo Borgia, an ancient version of JR Ewing crossed with Stalin, and Lucrezia was very tasty. Other actors I remember in the series were Alfred Burke, Clive Merrison, and the chap who played Tosh Lines in The Bill.

I've never seen it repeated and I wonder if anyone watched it because it was interesting and entertaining or purely because of the sex, violence and nudity content! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/eek.gif[/img] I think The Pope had much more fun in those days!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Fellwanderer

Why, the educational value, of course [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/innocent.gif[/img] How could you think otherwise?

I recall watching some, certainly not all, episodes but don't remember much of it apart from Alfred Burke being in it.

FELL
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif[/img]

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Harbottle

My only memory of this is Adolpho Celi [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif[/img]

red squirrel

I remember an episode where Pope Adolpho is instructing various of his, ahem, 'followers' to 'ride de whores' as they were engaged in a form of racing around a room - all good sporting behaviour.

It was always useful to bring up such papal infallibility during RE lessons at school, though strangely our teacher never watched it and it was such a classic BBC2 historical religious programme!

Wetherby Pond

I'm sure producer Mark Shivas would be only too happy to tell you - he gave a self-flagellatory interview on that very subject for BBC2's TV Hell in the early 1990s.

If I remember rightly, the programme was massively hampered by a weak script that wasn't at all sure whether it was a lighthearted romp or somethng more serious, and a lead actor whose limited grasp of English only became obvious after he'd signed the contract. (Adolfo Celi certainly looked the part, but as soon as he opened his mouth things went rapidly downhill).

Essentially, it was a blatant attempt at creating another I, Claudius, but without any of the ingredients that made the earlier series such a classic.