Cleopatra has never had much of a profile in Ireland, where we largely remember her as an alter-ego of Elizabeth Taylor – or of Amanda Barrie in Carrie On Cleo – rather than a figure from history. So, it’s bracing to discover Netflix’s new docudrama (streaming now) about this glamorous and mysterious ruler from antiquity has inspired great controversy in Egypt.
The crux of the debate is the decision to portray her as black. Zahi Hawass, a leading Egyptologist and former minister for antiquities in Cairo, accused the streamer of “trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilisation”.
But scholars participating in the documentary disagree. “My grandmother was the inspiration for me. I would come home and tell her what I was learning,” says Shelley P Haley, professor of Africana studies at Hamilton College, New York. “And I remember clear as day her saying to me, ‘Shelley, I don’t care what they tell you in school – Cleopatra was black.’ And that’s that.”
Prof Haley’s claim is supported by Egyptologist Sally-Ann Ashton who worked as a consultant for Netflix. “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa,” Ashton said in a statement. “If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”
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Setting aside the question of historical accuracy, the new Cleopatra is a bit of a streaming pyramid scheme. You wait for it to come to life yet it never does. The biggest issue is that it is deathly dull. Historical re-enactments can be hit and miss. Netflix’s latest lands wide of the mark by a significant distance.
Adele James – previously best known from the BBC’s Casualty – plays Cleopatra in the style of a plucky heroine from a Jane Austen adaptation, complete with Rada-worthy English accent. Sadly she is lumbered with dialogue that reads like Chat GPT taking a stab at sounding like Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones (“We should build a temple… a place for hope”).
The assembled experts meanwhile dispense banal observations about the George RR Martin-like quality of the Ptolemy dynasty of which Cleopatra was a member. “So there’s a civil war going on in Rome,” says one, flatly. “It’s about power.”
Despite the involvement of Hollywood’s Jada Pinkett Smith as producer, those BBC costume drama vibes are never fully banished. James does her best to capture Cleopatra’s mercurial side – and her determination to succeed as a woman in a man’s world.
Alas, the format of historical re-enactment juxtaposed with scholarly observations never coheres. As the argument over who owns the historical legacy of Cleopatra blazes on, the true shame is that Netflix didn’t take the time to make a more interesting documentary.
