Napoleon (Season 1)

Napoleon (2002) is a Franco-Canadian-British historical miniseries you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Yves Simoneau. Spread across two parts and roughly four hours, it follows Bonaparte's full arc — from an obscure officer who had to fight for the right to command to the prisoner on a windswept South Atlantic island running out of time.

Christian Clavier plays Napoleon not as monument but as a man: restless, calculating, capable of genuine warmth and cold miscalculation in the same afternoon. Isabella Rossellini is Joséphine, John Malkovich brings a glacial precision to Talleyrand, and Gérard Depardieu appears as General Moreau. The series moves through Austerlitz, the Russian disaster, and Waterloo without rushing, and keeps returning to the private costs — what the marriage became, what the obsession demanded from everyone around him.

Four hours is actually not much time for a life this size. The production earns it by staying with character over spectacle. Stream Napoleon (2002) online on iFILM.