Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Guardian Review of Pompeii programme

David Meadows points out a Guardian review of Pompeii: The Last Day (see my previous blog entry on):

Nancy Banks-Smith, "Go With the Flow"

As Meadows points out, "he (sic) seems to be rather too engrossed in his (sic) own writing style" [note: she's a woman] for it to be clear whether or not she liked it. I loved it, I must say, but I'm a sucker for CGI and the rest -- it beats those el-cheapo documentaries where they jerk the camera around and blur the picture lots. There's an emerging trend in BBC1 documentaries to dispense with "experts", i.e. academic talking heads, in favour of more drama and CGI, again a mainstay of the el-cheapo documentary, no doubt because "experts" are cheap. I find that a bit disappointing -- I like the talking heads; I like to have at least a bit of analysis and not just narration; but I'm not the typical BBC audience.

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