Wonderful character development!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Blistering performances.

This follow-up to "Julius Caesar" watching the continuing fortunes of Mark Antony (Colin Blakely) and Octavius Caesar (Ian Charleson) suffers from a fate that plagued too many of the BBC Shakespeare productions. Despite good performances and an accuracy with the text, it is overlong and too Elizabethan for it's own good.Mark Antony has won the country of Egypt for the Roman Empire, but becomes divided from his friend and fellow ruler Octavius Caesar when he falls in love with Cleopatra (Jane Lapotaire), Queen of Egypt setting the pair of them on course for a showdown...Blakely is good as Antony, and Lapotaire is dynamic and passionate as Cleopatra but Colin Blakely could do more with Caesar to give him more presence. There is some good support here with Emrys James's conflicted Enobarbus and Antony Pedley as Agrippa.Technically it's got some interesting sets notably Cleopatra's boudoir, but there is an excessive reliance on plain white or plain black backgrounds, and the stage fighting is clumsy and awkward to watch.Some scenes could have definitely been cut for pace as they drag too often, a sin in a straight drama such as this. Worthy but ineffective stuff.

The reputation of this performance is not good. The initial reviews were quite scathing. The competition from the Johnson/Suzman/Nunn version is decisive; the other version is better. However, there are many fine things about this video. Let's talk about them first.Ian Charleson's Octavius Caesar is good, a schoolmaster with ice water in his veins. Many of the supporting players are quite fine. The almost completely blind Esmond Knight does a hilarious drunk scene as Lepidus, and Donald Sumpter gives Pompey a model reading.The visuals are spare but more lushly colored than usual in the BBC series, giving a Mediterranean vividness to the whole show, even if lovers of spectacle will do better with the Taylor-Burton film.Emrys James is less successful as Enobarbus. This part is generally considered actor-proof, but here James is charmless and without variation. His great speech describing Cleopatra's barge is completely ineffective. Whether the blame is his or the director's is lost to history, but I'm betting on Jonathan Miller's expressed annoyance with "tired" tradition.However the real problem is with the two title characters. It's as if you'd gone to the theater, settled in your seat, and then heard an announcement that owing to the leads' illness, the actor playing Enobarbus would instead be playing Antony, and the actress playing Charmian would take on the role of Cleopatra.Colin Blakely was a bright spot in many fine films during his career, but they were usually other peoples' films. Here he understands the character well enough and gives a good performance. He plays all the right notes, but he himself is the wrong instrument. He's simply not an Antony.Jane Lapotaire is a bigger problem. Her portrayal of Cleopatra is small to the point of cramped, mechanical, calculating, and self-obsessed. A shopgirl's idea of a queen, she never strikes a single true note. In the first half of the play, she's merely wrong. In the second half she becomes an active trial for the viewer. When Antony is finally dead, instead of rising to greatness in understanding, she shrinks into dreary, unspontaneous hysteria. This is one Cleopatra who learns nothing from her experience. While she goes on and on shrieking and weeping, you wind up urging the snake to get on with it.So it's not an out and out disaster, but with the poor casting of the two leads, the show never quite pulls itself together. Turn your attention immediately to the RSC version with Johnson and Suzman, and don't look back.

Starring Jane Lapotaire and Colin Blakely, this BBC production looked unconventional from the start, with the willowy Lapotaire proving an able Queen of Egypt to the squat and rough soldier created by Blakely. Little glamour here but excellent performances from the leads (plus Ian Charleson as Octavius Caesar and Emrys James as Enobarbus) and an intriguing array of supporting performers. Like all the BBC Shakespeares, this suffers from being a little stage-bound in its feel, a recorded performance rather than a tv drama, but within those confines remains an appealing and accessible work.Those who have criticised the casting of Blakely have perhaps missed the point of Antony and Cleopatra (or taken too much notice of the glossy Taylor/Burton epic). Antony is first and foremost a soldier, and this is what attracts Cleopatra, not necessarily a physical attraction. This said, Jane Lapotaire puts a certain amount of passion in her portrayal of the Egyptian queen which works well. Although this version of the play has dated it remains in the top handful of the BBC complete Shakespeares.

Blakely is miscast as Antony, but James' Enobarbus makes up for Blakely's defects.