“The Odyssey” opens with a man who has everything and throws it away for a war. That is the engine of Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1997 miniseries, and it is the reason the thing still works nearly thirty years on. Odysseus leaves Ithaca, wins at Troy, and then spends a decade trying to get home. NBC aired it in two parts, on May 18 and May 19, 1997. It is a big, uneven, frequently stirring piece of television, and it earns its place among the better literary adaptations of its era.
Trailer, via Classic Trailer.
Armand Assante Carries Ithaca on His Back
The casting is the argument. Armand Assante plays Odysseus, and he plays him as a man who thinks his way out of rooms. That is the correct read of the character. This Odysseus is not a superhero. He is a talker, a liar when lying serves, a survivor who understands that the monsters are usually beatable if you are willing to be patient and dishonest in the right measure.
Assante has the build for the part and the weariness for it too. By the second half he looks like a man who has been at sea too long, which is exactly the point. The miniseries asks him to age across ten years of story, and he does it without much help from makeup. The performance is the spine of the whole production.
Greta Scacchi plays Penelope, and the production gives her real work to do. She is not a waiting figure. She is holding a kingdom together while suitors circle, and Scacchi plays the patience as strategy rather than passivity. The scenes between the two of them, when they finally come, land because both actors have been playing a long game.
A Cast That Reads Like a Roll Call of Character Actors
The supporting company is deep, and it is cast with an eye toward faces that can hold a frame. Look at who shows up:
- Isabella Rossellini as Athena
- Bernadette Peters as Circe
- Vanessa Williams as Calypso
- Christopher Lee as Tiresias
- Irene Papas as Anticlea
- Eric Roberts as Eurymachus
- Geraldine Chaplin as Eurycleia
- Jeroen Krabbé as Alcinous
- Michael J. Pollard as Aeolus
- Ron Cook as Eurybates
That is a remarkable bench for a network miniseries. Rossellini as the goddess who guides him is a smart piece of casting, because she can play divine detachment without camping it up. Peters as Circe gets the seductive enchantress beat and plays it with a smile that never quite reaches the eyes. Williams as Calypso is given the loneliest stretch of the story, and she makes the island feel like a trap built out of comfort.
Christopher Lee as Tiresias is the one that stays with you. He is in the Underworld sequence, and he plays the dead prophet as a man who has already seen how this ends and finds it neither tragic nor surprising. It is a small part and he makes it enormous.
Konchalovsky Shoots the Mediterranean Like It Matters
The miniseries was filmed in Malta, Turkey, parts of England and many other places around the Mediterranean, where the story takes place. That decision is doing more work than any single performance. The sea looks real. The light looks real. When Odysseus is becalmed or storm-tossed, you believe the water because the water is actually there.
Konchalovsky, who created the series and directed it, understands that this story is fundamentally a travelogue with gods in it. The production moves through coastlines and ruins and open water, and it never lets you forget that the journey is the point. The decade-long return is not a plot device here. It is the texture of the thing.
The direction won at the 49th Primetime Emmy Awards, taking Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or Special. That is the right call. The scale is ambitious for 1997 network television, and Konchalovsky keeps it coherent. He does not let the effects sequences swallow the human ones.
Monsters, Storms, and a Trip to the Underworld
The synopsis is the synopsis: Odysseus must overcome deadly monsters, powerful forces of nature, seductive enchantresses, and even journey into the bowels of the Underworld. The miniseries takes all of it seriously. The monsters are practical where they can be and effects-driven where they have to be, and the mix holds up better than you might expect.
The Underworld sequence is the high point. It is the moment where the story stops being an adventure and becomes something closer to a reckoning. Odysseus goes down among the dead and comes back with information he did not want. Lee’s Tiresias is the anchor of it, and the production gives the sequence the stillness it needs.
The forces of nature are the weaker half. Storms at sea are hard to stage on a television budget, and some of the water sequences look like what they are. That is a real limitation, and it shows. But the miniseries never lets the effects become the subject. It keeps cutting back to Assante’s face, which is the correct instinct.
Two Nights, One Story, and a Real Ending
NBC aired “The Odyssey” in two parts, beginning May 18, 1997. The two-night structure suits the material. Part one is the war and the early wanderings. Part two is the long grind home and the reckoning in Ithaca. Splitting it that way gives the suitors their own weight, and it means the homecoming does not feel rushed.
The genres listed for the series are Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, and Drama. All three are accurate. The fantasy is the gods and the monsters. The action is the fights and the escapes. The drama is the marriage, and that is the part the miniseries cares about most.
The source material is Homer’s epic poem, and the adaptation is reasonably faithful in the broad strokes. It compresses, as any adaptation must. It keeps the episodes that audiences expect and trims the ones they do not. That is a fair trade for a two-night network event.
Where the Miniseries Stumbles
The pacing sags in the middle of part two. Once Odysseus is off the island and back among people, the story loses some of its momentum. The suitors are a real threat, but they are a slow one, and the miniseries takes its time getting to the confrontation.
Some of the supporting turns are thinner than the casting deserves. With a bench this deep, you want more for several of them. Peters and Williams both get one strong sequence and then recede. Rossellini’s Athena drifts in and out in a way that serves the plot but undersells the performance.
And the effects, again, are of their moment. This is 1997 network television, and it looks like it. The seams show in the big set pieces. What saves it is that the seams show around the edges of a story that is being told with conviction, and conviction covers a lot.
The Verdict on “The Odyssey”
This is one of the better literary adaptations of the 1990s, and it holds up because it understands what the poem is actually about. It is not about a hero who wins. It is about a man who wants to go home and keeps finding reasons he cannot. Assante plays that want clearly, and Konchalovsky shoots the world it happens in with real care.
The Emmy for directing is the tell. This is a directed miniseries, not a written one. The script does its job, but the images are what you remember. The sea, the ruins, the Underworld, the island. The production went to the places the story takes place, and that choice pays off in every frame.
The published critical score sits at 7.9 out of 10, with a 79 percent mark on Rotten Tomatoes. That feels right. This is not a flawless piece of television. It sags, it creaks, and some of its effects have aged badly. But the central performance is strong, the cast is extraordinary, and the direction is award-worthy. It is a miniseries that takes Homer seriously and mostly delivers on the ambition.
What matters most is that it treats the journey as the story rather than the obstacle. The Trojan War is over in the first stretch. Everything after that is a man trying to get back to a woman who is trying to hold a door open for him. That is the whole thing, and “The Odyssey” knows it.
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