While I had heard about the controversy surrounding Netflix’s “docudrama” Queen Cleopatra, I hadn’t been tracking it much since it was actually released a few days ago. It’s #6 in Netflix’s Top 10 list, and I don’t think I’ve seen it go all that much higher than that.

However, the show has done something I didn’t think was even possible. It has not just the lowest audience score in Netflix history, it has essentially the lowest audience score possible on Rotten Tomatoes, a 1%. Not a 10%, a 1%. (Update: It just ticked up to 2%. Still an unprecedented low)

There aren’t many critic reviews in, but those are low as well, with the show sitting at a 13%. But those audience scores? I’ve never seen anything like this. Not with bad shows. Not with politically controversial shows prone to review bombing. Never this bad, not in Netflix history. Honesty, I think not even in TV history, at least with this many reviews in (over a thousand).

I’ve previously written about series with low Netflix review scores. The last time I broached this topic was when Netflix’s now-cancelled Resident Evil adaptation scored a 22% with fans, one of the lowest I’d ever seen on the service. That was low compared to other high profile Netflix misses, Jupiter’s Legacy with 73%, Space Force with 77%, Haters Back Off with 76%, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness with 39%. Fans usually rate things higher than critics, even bad shows, and the point being, a 1% audience score seems borderline mathematically impossible, even with the controversy the film has attracted.

The issue is the conceptualization of what purports to be a historical documentary saying that Cleopatra was a black “African queen,” as this season was supposed to be the first in a series covering different queens from the continent. But there is not terribly credible evidence that Cleopatra was black, and instead she was of Macedonian Greek descent. The country of Egypt in particular has taken offense to the show altering their history this dramatically and portraying it as something they believe is non-factual in a series that is meant to be a documentary.

The creator of the series, Tina Gharvi, has defended the casting choice:

“Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter. After much hand-wringing and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actor who could convey not only Cleopatra’s beauty, but also her strength. What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.”

Ghavri has been celebrating the show’s placement on Netflix’s lists, and continues to advocate for the decision:

But this has not resonated with critics or audiences. The low scores are no doubt overwhelmingly because of the casting choice and historical alterations, but the show at its core does not seem to be terribly good even outside of that. I have genuinely never seen a show review like this before, and I’ll be curious if Netflix will renew the series so it can spotlight other African queens who will no doubt be less controversial.

Update (5/15): Curiosity got the better of me, given the extremely low scores which had to be about more than simply the main controversy surrounding the series. If it was at least good, it would have some scores offsetting that.

It is not a huge shock to report that the show is…not good. While historical accuracy aside, Cleopatra Adele James is actually quite good in the part from what I saw (I could only do part of the first episode before I remembered I had about 12 other better shows to watch), the entire thing comes off like one of those bad historical re-enactment dramas I used to watch on the History Channel with my parents as a kid. The information, often inaccurate it seems, is also just very dull, and the entire thing feels like a dry soap opera. I am not shocked the critics are rejecting alongside fans not really even mentioning the issue of the Cleopatra’s casting.

Since I first wrote this article, the critic score has ticked down to 11% and the user score has ticked up to 2% with over 2,5000 reviews in now. Again, this is still the lowest score I’ve ever seen with the most reviews counter, the lowest by a pretty significant margin certainly for Netflix, at least. It speaks again to Netflix’s lapsed quality control where projects that probably never should have seen the light of day are instead giving a spotlight. This is far from the worst thing that’s ever aired on Netflix, despite these scores, but no, I’m not sure it should have actually made it to release. It’s still at #6 on the Top 10 list, and I expect it to quickly slide down from there.

If you do want to judge it for yourself, it’s only four, 45 minute episodes long, which was admittedly more of an investment that I wanted to make, but it’s relatively little compared to other series. or you could save yourself the time and read Cleopatra’s Wikipedia entry, which would be probably more accurate information and less painful to watch.

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