Although I'll probably end up sounding like Tom "Who" Baker, I think it's programmes like this that make Britain great. Along with its people, of course.
I include both the dramatic reconstruction on BBC1 and the Don Cruickshank on BBC2. As a BTW, I do like the fact that the Beeb are doing more and more of this programme-linking.
Three mini-series of two episodes each. Not being an Egyptologist I can't tell how accurate these dramas are. But I haven't yet found something I know to be false (unlike last night's drama "The Queen's Sister" which implied Douglas-Home was PM in the late Sixties. As if)
The Howard Carter one was fascinating; Don Cruickshank saddened me by saying that Carter was never honoured in his lifetime and there are no memorials to him. Although, of course, there are statues all round London and elsewhere to people long forgotten, whilst we all know Howard Carter. Even so, I think he deserves at least a Wing of the Brit Mus named after him.
I thought that after Carter the others would be less interesting, but in some ways they were even more compelling. the BBC have a comprehensive-looking website devoted to ancient Egypt but bizarrely not the programme. I found the one about Belzoni to be utterly fascinating, and what a tremendous portrayal by Matthew Kelly. did anyone see him on Parkinson? How crap is Parkinson nowadays he's on ITV. Didn't dare mention Egypt. Too intellekshool for an ITV viewer, thinks the coked-up ponytailed jackass who tells Parky what to ask. If he'd have been on BBC1 we would have had a discussion about Egypt. And I only tuned in for Thierry Henry, and missed him, really. But Stevie Wonder was pretty damn cool. Raquel talked a pile of pish, I'm afraid to say.
And the current one about cracking the secret of the Rosetta Stone. Wow! We did all this sort of thing in history in First Year. I sort of found it fascinating then, but lost interest subsequently. A day trip to Cairo is enough only to skim the surface; now we want to do likewise at Luxor. Or perhaps, some time in the future, a Nile Cruise. The thought of Cruises in general make me feel ill, but I've been led to understand that Nile Cruises are more Nile and less cruise.
I suppose there is an argument that it's only proper history if some boring geezer is walking round the Brit Mus lecturing us in the style of Kenneth Civilization Clark. Nah, give me drama, give me CGI, give me an insight into the personal circumstances and motivations of these unsung heroes. And give me Don Cruickshank and his brilliant photography team, too.
It's comforting to know that in these troubled times, when so many people are watching the pile of cack that passes for entertainment in some parts of TV-land, and bemoaning its darkness, or else claiming it gives brilliant insights into psychology that on a terrestrial TV channel not far away is some excellent TV that is teaching me about the wonders of creation. And the amazing people that create and rediscover it. There's a part of me that says why isn't everybody watching it. But there again, I'm not watching David Attenborough's Insects. Jimmy's watching it without me. It simply isn't me. But, somehow, it makes me feel a better person just to know that it is being transmitted at Prime Time on a popular station.
But other than this, what do we get for our £10 per month licence fee?
