Masada (miniseries)

Masada
DVD cover
Genre	Historical drama
Based on	The Antagonists by Ernest Gann
Written by	Joel Oliansky
Directed by	Boris Sagal
Starring	Peter O'Toole Peter Strauss Barbara Carrera Anthony Quayle Paul L. Smith David Warner
Narrated by	Richard Basehart
Composers	Jerry Goldsmith (episodes 1 and 2, 1981) Morton Stevens (episodes 3 and 4, 1981)
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of episodes	4
Production
Executive producers	George Eckstein Jennings Lang
Producer	Richard Irving
Production locations	Masada, Israel
Cinematography	Paul Lohmann
Editors	Edwin F. England Robert L. Kimble Peter Kirby
Running time	394 minutes
Production companies	Arnon Milchan Film Production, Ltd. Universal Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	April 5 (1981-04-05) – April 8, 1981 (1981-04-08)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

Masada is an American television miniseries that aired on ABC in April 1981. Advertised by the network as an "ABC Novel for Television," the TV series' script is based on the 1971 novel The Antagonists by Ernest Gann, with a screenplay written by Joel Oliansky. It tells a fictionalized account of the historical siege of the Masada citadel in Israel by legions of the Roman Empire in AD 73. The siege ended when the Roman armies entered the fortress, only to discover the mass suicide by the Jewish defenders when defeat became imminent.

The miniseries starred: Peter O'Toole as Roman legion commander Lucius Flavius Silva, Peter Strauss as the Jewish commander Eleazar ben Ya'ir and Barbara Carrera as Silva's Jewish mistress. It was O'Toole's first appearance in an American miniseries.

Masada was one of several historical miniseries produced in the early 1980s, following the success of the miniseries Roots, that aired on the ABC Network in 1977, and Shogun, which aired on NBC in 1980.