manofourtime

This has all the mistakes of the current crop of BBC documentaries.

1. An extremely painful style of delivery in voice over. This one is not quite delivered as 'reading to 4 years', but Alice Roberts is nearly that bad. That contrasts sharply with when she is talking to scientists; then she is just fine.

2. Irritating techniques of direction. I lost count of the sections delivered with her walking away from the camera, talking over her shoulder. It was supposed to be lively and engaging, in fact it came across as just bad manners.

3.More seriously, a complete failure to distinguish between 'fact' (or nearly certain fact) and conjecture. The often repeat CGI of the mating battle of male Glyptodons is pure conjecture. OK, but based on what? We weren't told. We weren't actually told it was a guess a either. There were many other such instances.

I can see what they are trying to do, but people who are satisfied with Eastenders et al (long running UK soap) are never going to watch a program about science, no matter what you do to make it 'accessible' and undemanding.

Endless shots of cars, people in cars, helicopters, people in helicopters, expensive tech, people carrying expensive tech. A never ending diet of increasingly tiresome superlatives, every 'find' is wonderful, amazing, important, astonishing. Is archaeology really like that? No it isn't.

The most disturbing thing about the whole film was the reckless extrapolation. They find the bottom of a vase, and immediately, before our very eyes, the computer constructs the vase itself. It's pure bullsh*t of course. The base they have found resembles the bases of other vases found elsewhere which look like the computer graphic we are shown. Similarly, we are shown 're-constructions' of two storey houses from the foundations. These buildings are assumed to have been timber framed buildings to resist earthquake damage (it's an earthquake region). A reasonable assumption, but there is no direct evidence whatsoever of the actual heights of the buildings. If they were stone built then relative heights could be partially deduced from the amount of spoil around the foundations, but they aren't, so it's guesswork and extrapolation. This is particularly disturbing as it is unclear whether then city was Greek or Minoan, or a bit of both over time. In which case, what would the style of the buildings have been? I don't doubt that if the producer had allowed them, the contributors could have given us a catalogue of interesting arguments to back their extrapolations, but that would be facts, and the modern BBC hates facts. I also doubt that the main presenter gives lectures that are a stream of undiluted superlatives (or his students would throw rocks at him, at least verbally), I have the impression that left to his own devices he is an interesting and engaging speaker. It all comes down to the BBC belief that all programs must be 'accessible' to people with low IQ and a negligible attention span, who won't bother to watch it anyway.

It is sort of OK, quite enjoyable to watch, but after a while you notice that there are almost no male participants. Now if the study of the early Christian church in the UK was dominated by women, that might be just about alright, but its not. Many of the most important authorities on the subject are men, but their contribution is not included. This is common nowadays with any BBC documentary that is not pure science.

This on its own is enough to make it clear the series is more of a political vehicle than a work of scholarship. When a distortion like like this is so obvious, you then have to ask yourself, what else have they twisted? Not being an expert on the subject I cannot say, it may be accurate, or it may be complete bunk. It certainly can't be trusted, it cannot be treated as educational.

A small point, when Dr Ramirez is speaking to camera she is fine, and interesting, but when she is doing a voice over she adopts this soupy 'reading a story to a 4 year old' style. All the BBC's women documentary presenters do this now. I wonder who on earth thinks it's a good idea.

The sound quality is poor, all the actors have heavy accents (London, Russian, Scottish), and there are no subtitles. As a result it is impossible to make out some of the dialogue, even for someone with good hearing.

You can go back over and over some of it and you will never get it. If you are watching the DVD the plot is a bit of a mystery most of the time. A very shoddy piece of work by Metrodome, they want your money, but don't give you an adequate product for it.

For example, throughout the film, every time they have a drink they use the same toast, but it is not possible to make out what they say. Just one of the many irritations.