- Drama, Action & Adventure
- 120 min episodes
- 1 season
- 4 episodes
- Ended
Masada is a 1981 American historical drama television miniseries aired on ABC under the tentpole ABC Novel for Television. The screenplay by Joel Oliansky is based on Ernest Gann's 1971 novel The Antagonists. A dramatization of the historical siege of the Masada citadel in Roman Palestine by legions of the Roman Empire in AD 73. A siege that ended when the Roman armies entered the fortress, only to discover the mass suicide by the Jewish defenders when defeat became imminent.
- Suicide or self-harm
- Bleak ending
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Character
Earnest, grave, classical in form and resolved.
- earnestironic
- gravecomic
- classical in formformally daring
- resolvedopen-ended
- intimateepic
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Reviews on TMDB
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- CinemaSerfon TMDB · Mar 20227/10
I remember watching this mini-series on the BBC and throughly enjoying every minute (I was 14!). It marries historical fact, legend and drama creating a cracking action adventure that sees nine hundred Jewish people take refuge in the eponymous and impregnable mountain fortress, fleeing the brutal regime of the Vespasianic legions under the command of Peter O'Toole's ("Silva"). The other principal casting maybe isn't the best - Peter Strauss didn't work for me at all and the seriously wooden Barbara Carrera also stretches the imagination just a tad, but the pace of the story builds well as the besieging Romans face all the desert environment and the Jewish freedom fighters can throw at them. There is an inevitability about it - the engineering prowess of the army soon starts to sound a death knell for the brave souls gathered above, and there are some strikingly brutal examples of just how ruthless the occupying forces could be - a whole new set of uses for catapults, for example. A solid cast including Sir Anthony Quayle, David Warner and Dennis Quilley give the proceedings extra gravitas and O'Toole manages to resist any temptation to ham it up delivering a strong, considered, pe
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Cast
- Peter O'TooleGeneral Cornelius Flavius Silva
- Peter StraussEleazar ben Yair
- Barbara CarreraSheva
- Alan FeinsteinAaron
- Giulia PaganoMiriam
- Anthony QuayleRubrius Gallus
- Paul L. SmithGideon
- David WarnerSenator Pomponius Falco
- Clive FrancisAttius, Head Tribune
- David OpatoshuShimon
Crew
- Joel OlianskyCreator
- Boris SagalDirector
- Ernest K. GannNovel
- Paul LohmannDirector of Photography
- Jerry GoldsmithOriginal Music Composer
- Morton StevensOriginal Music Composer
- Ron RutbergEditor
- Robert L. KimbleEditor
- George EcksteinProducer
- Richard IrvingProducer
Where to watch
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Seasons
- Miniseries4 eps · 1981
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