a reply to:
DBCowboy
Obviously a parody on history documentaries, and there are things missing, opportunities for parody which haven't been exploited.
Not once in the entire programme does anybody being described make an amazing/astonishing/remarkable discovery.
Not one in the entire programme does anything happen that "changed the world... FOR EVER".
It is one of the rules of documentaries that one of those two things must happen every five minutes.
Where are the "dramatic reconstructions" with embarassingly anachronistic dialogue? In the section on Harold and William, she could have had Saxon
warriors telling the cameraman "We've been waiting for months, and we're like 'Where are they?'" (I grieve to report that this is a real example. I
haven't made it up.)
Worst of all, we can hear what she is saying. Where was the "atmospheric" music loud enough to drown out the speaker, without which modern viewers
cannot tolerate stretches of verbal explanation?
All parodies of British history are following in the footsteps of the masters, Sellars and Yeatman ("1066 and all that").
Here is their description of the departure of the Romans;
"The withdrawal of the Roman legions to take part in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (due to a clamour among the Romans for pompous
amusements such as bread and circumstances) left Britain defenceless and subjected Europe to that long succession of Waves of which History is chiefly
composed. While the Roman Empire was overrun by waves not only of Goths, Visigoths, and even Goths, but also of Vandals (who destroyed works of art)
and Huns (who destroyed everything and everybody, including Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and even Vandals), Britain was attacked by waves of Picts
(and of course Scots) who had recently learned to climb the wall, and of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who, landing at Thanet, soon overran the country
with fire (and, of course, the sword)."
edit on 11-9-2018 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)