ORBzine - Up Pompeii (1969) TV Review

Season 1

• Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up The Chastity Belt )
• Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner )
• Nausius (Kerry Gardner)
• Senna the Soothsayer (Jeanne Mockford)
• Roman Maiden ( Anita Richardson )
• Sen. Ludicrus Sextus (Max Adrian)
• Erotica ( Georgina Moon )
• Soppia ( Wendy Richard )
• Daili ( Valerie Leon )

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 0] Up Pompeii!
Shown Mon, Sep 1, 1969

A slave-trader has arrived in port, with a cargo of beautiful slave-girls from Britannia. He wants to sell them to the Ludi Puerum (Play Boy) club. Mistress Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) wants to rekindle her former romance with the slaver. Her son Nauseus wants to buy one of the slave-girls, because he thinks he has fallen in love again. Senator Ludicrus wants to close the bawdy houses, including the afore-mentioned Ludi Puerum club.

Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up the Chastity Belt ), the house slave, tries to keep them all apart. However, in the usual tropes of the 1970s comedy of errors they all bump into each other at the Ludi Puerum club.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 1] Vestal Virgins
Shown Mon, Mar 30, 1970

It is VV Day in Pompeii - the festival of the Vestal Virgins. The townsfolk must select a pure maiden as their beauty queen, and if her virginity survives a night out with Mark Anthony she will be inducted as a Vestal Virgin. Senator Ludicrus has been put in charge of the committee. Unfortunately there are no virgins in the town.

The pimp who runs the Ludi Puerum club tries to sabotage the VV contest. Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up the Chastity Belt ) has to save the day. He is offered a budget of five hundred drachmas, which incidentally enough to buy his freedom.

Zeus (Willie Rushton) interjects with quotes from Plautus. He also interjects directly, in an example of the classical theatre's Deus Ex Machina trope.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 2] The Ides of March
Shown Mon, Apr 6, 1970

Senator Ludicrus Sextus meets with three other Senators. They plot to assassinate Caesar, who has just arrived in Pompeii.

Mistress Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) goes to save the Emperor. It turns out that he is the exact double of Lurkio. This means that the show gets even more meta than usual. Frankie Howerd plays both characters, and the storyline follows the old comedy-of-errors format. His interactions with the audience get pushed up a notch, with pantomime-type shouts of he's behind you.

The Senator's household includes a handmaiden, Soppia ( Wendy Richard ). Presumably for budgetary reasons, she does not even get mentioned in the other episodes.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 3] The Senator and the Asp
Shown Mon, Apr 13, 1970

Daili ( Valerie Leon )

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 4] Britannicus
Shown Mon, Apr 20, 1970

The army is called up to fight another rebellion in Britannia. Mistress Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) becomes a camp follower, because she wants to pleasure the bravest soldier. Her husband, the general, wants the most beautiful groupie. Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up the Chastity Belt ) inadvertently arranges a meeting in a darkened tent.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 5] The Actors
Shown Mon, Apr 27, 1970

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 6] Spartacus
Shown Mon, May 4, 1970

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1, Episode 7] The Love Potion
Shown Mon, May 11, 1970

Up Pompeii (1969)

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 1 , Episode 1 ]
Shown th October 2022 [Wednesday]

Reviewed in our special supplement

Season 2

• Sen. Ludicrus Sextus (Wallas Eaton)
• Nymphia ( Barbara Windsor )
• Jamus Bondus (George Baker - Doomwatch )

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 1] The Legacy
Shown Mon, Sep 14, 1970

The good news is that Ludicrus Sextus has had a face-lift, and is now played by a different actor. The bad news is that the household is still heavily in debt. Mistress Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) wants to sell Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up the Chastity Belt ).

The bad news is that Ludicrus Sextus's Uncle Luca has died. The good news is that he left Ludicrus a fortune in the will. The bad news is that Ludicrus and Ammonia must have a son and name him after Luca.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 2] Roman Holiday
Shown Mon, Sep 21, 1970

Lurcio (Frankie Howerd - Up the Chastity Belt ) agrees to hide two escaped slaves.

In a typical sitcom case of mistaken identity, Mistress Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) and her hot tweenage daughter get mistaken for the escaped slaves.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 3] Secret Agents Jamus Bondus
Shown Mon, Sep 28, 1970

A messenger arrives at the house, and demands to speak to Senator Ludicrus Sextus. The message is in the form of a secret scroll, and Lurkio has to hide it the one place that villains will never look.

Jamus Bondus (George Baker - Doomwatch ) visits the house. He fails the tests Lurkio sets for him, but is easily distracted by the mistress of the home, Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ).

There is another visitor - Galoria ( Patricia Haines ), a femme fatale. In a twist she turns out to be the girlfriend of Nauseous, who thinks she is called Pussia. As in ... Pussy Galore. Yes, that is the level of pun this descends to.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 4] Lysistrata the Peace Treaty
Shown Mon, Oct 12, 1970

The city's Militia is called up to go off and fight the Gauls. Senator Ludicrus Sextus is a general, as befits his status. The younger officer, who will lead the actual fighting, is after the Senator's wife Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ). He takes a dislike to Lurkio, simply because Lurkio interrupted the adultery to allow them to save face before the Senator walked in on them. Lurkio does not care, because he thinks himself exempt from the draft.

When Lurkio is drafted, he decides to copy the Greek theatre play Lysistrata. He dresses as a woman, calls himself Titicaca, and convinces the women of the city to go on a sex strike. The Senator assigns his younger colleague to seduce this feminist icon. The result seems to have inspired The Crying Game.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 5] Guess Who's Coming to Sin'Er Nymphia
Shown Mon, Oct 19, 1970

Young Master Nauseus falls in love again, and this time he gets engaged. Unfortunately the lucky girl is Nymphia ( Barbara Windsor ). The Senator recognises her from a strip-tease joint that he and his friends went to, while the Senator's wife Ammonia ( Elizabeth Larner ) regrets her secret affair with Nymphia's father. Lurkio just looks down on her because she is a common-as-muck Cockney.

To break up the happy couple, Lurkio must dress up as the Caliph of Khazi. He keeps quoting Omar Khayam, who would not be born for another 700 years. At the time this show was made, playing dress-up was regarded as part of theatrics. In the twenty-first century, it would be referred to as cultural appropriation.

Up Pompeii (1969) [Season 2, Episode 6] Exodus
Shown Mon, Oct 26, 1970

The Senator's family is leaving Pompeii, and are moving to the city of Rome. It seems the inheritance from the start of the Season might have been enough to bail them out, but moving house has left them financially broke. Now they need to sell Lurkio.

Lurkio gets put on the auction block. A middle-aged blonde woman needs a male slave, and she is not the type to take no for an answer. In real life, the actor Frankie Howard was a closeted gay man ...