# Masada (1981)

> A four-part 1981 ABC miniseries dramatizing the Roman siege of the mountain fortress Masada and the defenders who chose death over surrender.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/12499

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 120 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, history, war
- Created by: Joel Oliansky
- Network: ABC
- Cast: Peter O'Toole, Peter Strauss, Barbara Carrera, Alan Feinstein, Giulia Pagano, Anthony Quayle, Paul L. Smith, David Warner
- TMDB rating: 7.8/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081900/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: brutal
- Tone: solemn, tense, mournful, epic, contemplative

## What critics say

Viewers broadly praise the epic scale and the performances, particularly Peter O'Toole and Peter Strauss, in this positively received historical miniseries.

## Synopsis

Masada (1981) is a four-part American historical miniseries created by Joel Oliansky for ABC, adapted from Ernest Gann's novel The Antagonists and produced as part of ABC's tentpole novel-for-television event. Peter O'Toole plays General Cornelius Flavius Silva, the Roman commander whose legions press against the mountaintop fortress, while Peter Strauss plays Eleazar ben Yair, the Jewish leader who must hold together nearly a thousand refugees trapped on the rock. Barbara Carrera, Alan Feinstein and Giulia Pagano round out the principal cast as characters caught between survival and faith. The engine of the story is a long, grinding siege: Roman engineers build ramps and walls while the defenders weigh surrender against the cost of their own freedom. Each two-hour episode mixes battle sequences, political maneuvering in Rome and intimate scenes inside the fortress. Set in the first century AD in Roman Palestine, it is a sweeping, earnest epic with a mournful, contemplative tone and a focus on honor and endurance. Fans of Spartacus and Rome will find resonance in its scale and its portrait of a doomed rebellion against empire.

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