Netflix’s ‘Queen Cleopatra’ Appears to Have the Worst Audience Score in TV History

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%. {snip}

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%. {snip}

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.”

{snip}