Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

Jesus of Nazareth is six hours long.  I broke it up into two viewings, but you might want to make it three.  It is very thorough, and actually very good.  So far it's my favorite Jesus movie.  It covers everything from before conception to after the Resurrection.  The acting is very well done.  The characters (even Jesus!) behave like real people.  The costumes manage to be both historical and interesting.  At this point I would suggest that if you are trying to watch your way through history and only want to watch one Jesus movie, watch this one if you have the attention span for it.

I, Claudius (1976)

I, Claudius is an excellent television series.  It took me a while to get through all of it, because I had to wait for some of the discs.  It covers the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, but still manages to be surprisingly easy to follow.  I felt that some of the earlier episodes dragged, but once Caligula enters the picture it gets really interesting.  The characters tend to be color coded, with good guys in green and bad guys in blue and gold, but this isn't universally true.  Herod is always readily identifiable in purple.  Some of the fabrics used looked cheap in a very modern kind of way, and I don't believe Romans ever wore green togas, still it was very entertaining to watch and I recommend it.  The DVD also comes with a documentary about the failed attempt at a full length movie version of the book, which was also interesting.