Netflix’s “docudrama” Queen Cleopatra launched two weeks ago and now looks to have earned the unenviable plaudit of drawing the worst audience score in TV history.
Forbes magazine reports the controversial production has not just garnered the lowest audience score in Netflix history on debut, it has essentially the lowest audience score possible on Rotten Tomatoes at one percent.
Not a 10 percent. A one percent, although Forbes reports it has later stumbled upwards to hit the giddy heights of two percent.
Still an unprecedented low.
The outlet acknowledged the basement score, saying: “Fans usually rate things higher than critics, even bad shows, and the point being, a 1 per cent audience score seems borderline mathematically impossible, even with the controversy the film has attracted.”
The documentary, which is part of the African Queens series, purports to be an exploration of the rise and fall of the last pharaoh of Egypt. It was released on May 10.
It proposes the case Cleopatra was a black woman with several of the commentators featured arguing Cleopatra could potentially be of African descent instead of Greek, as Breitbart News reported.
The Daily Caller for one has documented dissenting voices that question the proposition Queen Cleopatra had African descent.
“Cleopatra VII was white—of Macedonian descent, as were all of the Ptolemy rulers, who lived in Egypt,” Kathryn Bard, professor of archaeology and classical studies at Boston University, said as Newsweek reported, according to the outlet.
“We know who her father was,” Gerald Kadish, teaching professor emeritus of history and Near Eastern studies at Binghamton University is also quoted as saying.