January Meme: What historical figure/event/era you would make a television show about?

[selenak]

Some previous replies to this question by lirazel from years ago are here, but thankfully, history offers so much territory that I can always come up with another additional potential tv series. (Btw, let me add that looking back to that five-season-of-Frederick-the-Great treatment I wrote ages ago when I knew far less: I still think it would be excellent material for a tv show, especially knowing so much more now about the other boyfriends and siblings. And the envoys.)

So, this time around, I would like to offer some literary material to be filmed, to wit, Lion Feuchtwanger's trilogy of novels about the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus/Josef ben Matthias. For informative reviews, see cahn's write-up of the trilogy here and skygiants's review of the first volume here. It has it all: a morally ambiguous, controversial main character, constant identity clashes, all the different cultures around the Mediterranean, the second Roman-Jewish war in volume 1 and the sadly still contemporary question of how to live as a writer in a dictatorship in volume 3, and a very slashy relationship between our antihero and his life long frenemy Justus.

Now, something needs to be done about the female characters. Not that there aren't any interesting ones, especially Berenice in volume 1 and Lucia in the later half of 2 and all through 3, but the way the narrative treats most of them is, shall we say, dated. (Though they don't get fridged, I hasten to add.) However, that's why it's an adaption. I would like to point to the miniseries Masada, set during the same era, which is not only better in general than the novel it's based on (called The Antagonists), but in particular because of how it treats Sheba, the most important female character. And that was made decades ago. So I think you can use the novels as the main material to base the tv show on while still fleshing out the female characters, which would not change the larger plot lines but would add to them.

The other days

Comments

[selenak]

I agree that Mara needs a girlfriend, which would have to be a new character, perhaps one of the other prisoners who later goes with Mara and lives with her at the estate. For Berenice, otoh, I could imagine interesting scenes with both Caenis and Dorion. I know Caenis has a negative attitude about her in the novel, but there's no plot reason for that, and she could be both realistic about any official Titus/Berenice marriage being negative PR for Titus and interested in Berenice as a person. (After all, Caenis herself never married Vespasian despite being his life long companion - btw, Caenis is a historical character, not invented, she and Vespasian really were a life long affair.) They also are on different ends of the social scale, with Caenis the freedwoman of Antonia Minor, i.e. a former slave, and Berenice a princess, and yet both in completely different situations from where they expected their life to end up.

As for Dorion, given that Berenice is both a Jewess and deeply imprinted on Greek culture, and, again, a Princess, I think Dorion in the volume 1 era would both want to meet her - since Joseph uses Titus as a go-between to talk Dorion into marrying him, it could be worked into the plot easily - and be confounded by Berenice being both. Considering Dorion's Antijudaism is very much tied to her marriage getting toxic which doesn't happen until mid volume2, I'd be curious to see how she would handle a woman who has similar and yet different identity clashes as Joseph and whom she can't dismiss as being her social inferior or as not knowing about the visual arts. (Rather the contrary, for Berenice as an Herodian princess.)

Another thing about Mara: simply by adding some scenes from her pov throughout the saga, we could see her development from shy and broken war captive to confident estate manager (who still loves Joseph until THAT event in volume 3, but doesn't depend on his presence anymore in volume 2 already). Since she's in Rome during part of volume 2, I'd give her the chance to spit on Vespasian's grave, so to speak. (Since the Romans are cremated, it would have to be his statue once he's a god, I guess.) And you could give her a daughter in addition to the two sons (which have to be there and have to be sons for plot reasons) and show us the two of them relating to each other. I'd also be curious how the Jewish community in Rome relates to her, since her being a former war captive and her original marriage with Joseph was a big issue in Israel and in Alexandria, but things in Rome are somewhat different.

The one character where you basically don't have to change anything is Lucia. :)

[cahn]

Ohhhhh it would be really cool for Caenis to disapprove of Berenice politically but like her personally, I am all on board with that :)

Considering Dorion's Antijudaism is very much tied to her marriage getting toxic which doesn't happen until mid volume2, I'd be curious to see how she would handle a woman who has similar and yet different identity clashes as Joseph and whom she can't dismiss as being her social inferior or as not knowing about the visual arts.

And this is also very interesting! I want to watch these now :D

Another thing about Mara: simply by adding some scenes from her pov throughout the saga, we could see her development from shy and broken war captive to confident estate manager

YES. I was happy she got to be an awesome estate manager in the books but sort of annoyed that it all happened offscreen! And also YES to daughter YES PLEASE. I'd like her to have a couple of daughters!

The one character where you basically don't have to change anything is Lucia. :)

It is true! It's why I didn't say she needed to have girlfriends :) (I mean, I would absolutely not object to that! Just, she doesn't need them the way Mara does, or even Berenice or Dorion.)