“You can’t fail to warm to a person who gets to grips with a civilisation through its shit, piss and willy-fixation.” Read on for the verdict on last night’s TV.
Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, BBC2
“Beard, although she sounded populist, was careful to show us the academic process by which she reached her conclusions.”
Andrew Billen, The Times
“It’s virtually impossible to make a dull film about Pompeii, in part because of the energies of the city’s Tweeters, who – lacking smart phones – had to inscribe their updates on the nearest bit of masonry.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
“You can’t fail to warm to a person who gets to grips with a civilisation through its shit, piss and willy-fixation.”
John Crace, The Guardian
Imagine… Ben Hur, BBC1
“It was not a re-evaluation of the 1959 movie but a documentary recording how an amateur version of the tale made it to the stage in Bath earlier this year.”Andrew Billen, The Times
“Lyford was the director, one of just a handful of professionals involved in the production, and what was making him feel queasy was the unreliability of some members of his cast, a third of whom had failed to turn up for a rehearsal.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
Beautiful Equations, BBC4
“It was a nice idea to make a film about how equations describe nature but it came up against the brick wall that all science populists always seem to hit. There are some things you just can’t make intelligible to the lay person.”
John Crace, The Guardian
“There is… a beauty in watching a gifted presenter tackle something that completely outside of his field.”
Matt Baylis, The Express
The War You Don’t See, ITV1
“This was Pilger’s J’accuse, in which he indicted UK and US media for allowing itself to be manipulated by governments into misreporting or ignoring every global conflict since the second world war.”
John Crace, The Guardian
The Family, C4
“Ola’s traditional Nigerian upbringing takes a dim of view of girls going out.”
Matt Baylis, The Express
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