Watch History Cold Case on BBC2 this Thursday evening. They’re covering this extraordinary case in forensic (literally) detail.
Archive for the ‘TV and Radio’ Category
March 26th, 2010
HBO's The Pacific
Not medieval alert: I’m off to a screening today of the first two episodes of ‘The Pacific’. This is the Hanks/Spielberg follow-up to the peerless ‘Band of Brothers’, which followed Easy Company, (part of the American 101st Airborne Division ) from the Normandy landings in June 1944 to the fall of Berlin. I confess I am unnaturally excited. The Pacific shifts the story to the eastern theatre. This part of the war doesn’t get taught or talked about half as much as events in Europe, perhaps because conditions were even more dreadful, the fighting perhaps more barbaric and the human cruelty at least as grotesque. Will this translate into good television? Spielberg, Hanks and HBO have form, so I suspect it will. Will it be easy viewing? I doubt it.
Here’s the trailer:
February 16th, 2010
'Plantagenet' on BBC Radio 4
Having missed the Classic Serial, ‘Plantagenet’, on Radio 4 this Sunday, I caught up this morning on iPlayer.
The first episode, ‘What is a Man?’ focused on the squabbles between Henry II and his sons, Henry the Young King, Richard and Geoffrey, which dominated his reign from the Great War of 1173/4 until the elder Henry’s death in 1189. Fantastic material: this is perhaps one of the stormiest stories in the whole of the later Middle Ages, as the politics of dynasty-building are played out through the folly of human ambition. There was also one hell of a war (in 1173/4), which involved virtually every major magnate from Scotland to the Pyrenees.
Walker’s storytelling was surprisingly tame. He painted the scene by numbers: the conflict between family and kingship exposing the troubled contradictions between the instincts of kings and princes, and the instincts of fathers and sons. But in doing so, the politics were oversimplified and watered down, the characters never fully fleshed out, and the battles literally non-existent. Here were a load of rich folk squabbling. Nothing more.
There were also some clumsy inaccuracies, and while I don’t have any massive objection to historical liberties being taken in the name of improving drama or dialogue, in this case they didn’t really seem to do that.
For example: the old myth about Henry’s family descending from the devil was rehashed. Fine, but none of them subsequently came across very diabolical. A bit peeved and pottymouthed, maybe. But hardly Satanic. Likewise with the Eleanor of Aquitaine stereotype: as per usual she was painted as the jilted poet queen of the south, but in her scene with the old king, as he swept her off to exile in England following her conniving in the rebellion of 1173, she was unflustered and leaden.
There were also a number of howlers. Henry as ‘the King of Anjou and England’? That’d be the King of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou (etc) then. And right at the start, Henry II was addressed as ‘your majesty’ - a term introduced for the English monarch by Henry VIII. There were more, but it’s pedantic to list them.
I feel bad hating on a serial I was really looking forward to, and which I applaud Radio 4 for commissioning. But it was just a little bit thin. As I have mentioned here before, I am writing the history of the Plantagenets at the moment, for publication next year. So I wished this series nothing but well - these rich and wonderful times deserve their place in the zeitgeist. I’m hoping it will improve next week, when the story moves on to Richard I’s reign. I will certainly be tuning in.
February 10th, 2010
Vampires: Why They Bite
If you want to have another look at tonight’s BBC3 show, ‘Vampires: Why They Bite’, which was presented by the brilliant Lisa Hilton, then jog on over to BBC iPlayer. You will spot me banging on about the historical significance of the vampire myth at several points.
February 10th, 2010
The Plantagenets on Radio 4
Hat tip to my old historical mucker Ben Wilson for drawing my attention to a BBC Radio 4 drama series beginning this Sunday. ‘Plantagenet’ consists of three plays by Mike Walker, covering the Angevin years of the Plantagenet dynasty. The first tells the old ‘Lion in Winter’ story - of Henry II’s bitter wars with his sons and wife over the succession to the vast Angevin realm of England, Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. The second looks at Richard I’s reign; the third examines the pathetic spectacle of John’s.
This is just the subject matter I am currently wrestling with in writing my next book, which will cover all the Plantagenets from Henry II to Richard II. So I’ll be listening with interest, and posting my thoughts in due course.
Incidentally, and on the subject of the BBC and the Angevins: there was, in the late 1970s, an apparently quite brilliant 13-part television series dramatising the whole period from c1133-1268. It was called The Devil’s Crown. I did some sleuthing via a BBC chum last year, trying to see if it was available on DVD. Alas, it is not. It is stored in the BBC archives, but only on VHS. And, worse, several of the original tapes are now missing. If you’ve got a full set gathering dust in your attic, then a) you’re sitting on a goldmine, and b) can I borrow it, please?
January 25th, 2010
A History of the World in 100 Objects, addendum
This, from Cambridge student rag ‘Varsity’, just buzzed onto my BlackBerry, courtesy of a Google Alert.
It pertains to the BBC series I mentioned earlier today.
It’s fairly dull.
But I was interested to read this:
“Many objects chosen have been dramatically excavated from Cambridgeshire soil… The Archaeological Unit… offered a remarkable medieval coin hoard discovered by workmen in a sewerage shaft in Cambridge city centre.”
And there’s me thinking that the only things to be found down Cambridge sewerage shafts were regurgitated porto-wine and swans’ feet…
January 25th, 2010
A History of the World in 100 Objects
I was a bit narked that Radio 4’s Book of the Week was bumped to make way for the BBC’s central programme in its History of the World in 100 Objects bonanza. Authors are struggling enough as it is, without whipping out a valuable promotional rug from under our feet.
But after the first six shows it seems to be an irritation amply rewarded. The show is thoughtful, surprising and intellectually engaged. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum is a fine host (although the Scots have now almost entirely taken over the morning airwaves: on a Monday one can go from James Naughtie on the Today programme, to Andrew Marr on Start the Week, and on to MacGregor: a festival of Scotchness from 6am to 10am.) And the guest ‘experts’ are entertaining choices. Forget dusty old suits from the universities: in the last three episodes, all concerning prehistoric man, I’ve heard the archbishop of Canterbury, Madhur Jaffrey and Bob Geldof.
Niggles: the music is appalling (pan pipes? I believe the expression is WTF). The plugs on Radio 4 and elsewhere are enraging, and take BBC internal advertising to a new level of self-indulgence. And the website is a Flash nightmare.
Well worth listening, either live or archived here.
January 16th, 2010
History Today revisited
I grew up adoring Rob Newman and David Baddiel. Their sketches and the catchphrases - such as they were - from their TV shows were a sort of watchword amongst my closest schoolfriends. We all particularly loved ‘History Today’, their sketch about two cantankerous history professors debasing and abusing one another with childish insults, and I remember that the phrase ‘…that’s you, that is’, echoed endlessly around the classrooms and science laboratories of the grammar school where I was educated. Looking back, it must have driven the teachers to distraction.
In a moment of idle reflection today I decided to hunt down some of the History Today sketches on YouTube. Here’s the best of the bunch, though it’s worth watching as many as you can put up with.
I also came across this rather nice piece of analysis of the sketch and the states of mind of Newman and Baddiel when they were filming and performing it. I remember watching the Wembley gig mentioned here on television with a mawkish fascination, knowing that the pair literally despised one another and would never perform together again. That History Today drew them together on stage and screen is in that context quite interesting, and one can read endlessly into the subtext of the abuse as they trade insults. It’s rather reminiscent of the later Derek and Clive sketches, performed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, when Cook was riven with alcoholism and jealousy of Dudley’s burgeoning celebrity, and hurling as much vitriol as he could at his partner, all under the veneer of humorous banter.
‘A man may seye full sooth in game and pley,’ as Chaucer had it.
June 9th, 2009
The Today programme (redux)
It was interesting to hear it reported twice on this morning’s Today programme that the group of Labour rebels mustering forces for a fatal attack on Gordon Brown have dubbed themselves members of ‘the peasants’ revolt’. In terms of sheer upheaval - ‘the world turned upside down’ - the analogy between the (literally) bloody summer of 1381 and the (metaphorically) bloody summer of 2009 seems less and less fanciful by the day.
Of course, what was notable about the 1381 revolt was that it was a genuine expression of popular anger, led in the most part by community leaders from the localities and aimed against the political classes as a whole. What we are seeing in parliament today is factional infighting as an incumbent political party tries to save itself from precisely that fate.
Indeed, there is an argument to say that Labour MPs claiming to be the inheritors of Wat Tyler are actually as crass as the bunkered Brownites. The MPs aiming to oust their leader are doing so in order to limit the damage done to their party when the country finally goes to the polls in a general election. In other words, they wish to dampen as far as possible the electorate’s inclination to wreak full revenge on the government - at the ballot box, rather than the chopping block.
'Plantagenet' on BBC Radio 4: Episode 2
So. Episode 2 was a little better than the first. We had Henry II dying, betrayed and heartbroken, as his beloved Le Mans burned to the ground. Then we had Richard I giving Saladin’s heathen johnnies the right royal runaround in the Holy Land, then falling out with his ‘lover’ (never bought that, myself) Philip I of France and draining England of its gold in the process.
But this series is still pretty undercooked. The characters are too thin, and their motives painfully oversimplified. It’s not a subtle family drama, but it’s not a political thriller either. There are some infuriating tics: the habit of referring to the ‘King of Anjou and England’ has started to really get my goat.
And weirdest of all, this episode was narrated by a breathy, almost orgasmic Eleanor of Aquitaine, who seemed to be auditioning for a job doing the next batch of M&S food ads. It right gave me goose-bumps, and not in a good way.
Sigh.