History on TV...dumbing down

[ardcarp]

There was a short discussion at the end of Radio 4's Today programme about including 'acted out' scenes during factual history programmes. Mary Beard (not there in person) is dead against it . But someone tried to explain the rationale behind it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000t5x

2hrs 54 mins 30 sec from start

[french frank]

There was a short discussion at the end of Radio 4's Today programme about including 'acted out' scenes during factual history programmes. Mary Beard (not there in person) is dead against it . But someone tried to explain the rationale behind it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000t5x

2hrs 54 mins 30 sec from start

I read a news story about it this morning. I gather MB doesn't include in her criticism Lucy Worsley trying on different clothes.

[french frank]

The rationale is understandable: "This is docu-drama, a gateway drug suitable for idle viewers, the way people come to watching history through drama, adding to the story … "

The woman speaker was trying to say this wasn't what MB really meant, but in that case, it wasn't clear what they thought MB was saying and what they thought about it.

It's a phenomenon of modern broadcasting which comes from broadcasters targeting 'the masses' of 'mass media'. If you find that style 'excruciating'/unviewable/unlistenable - tough: most people like it.

[Richard Tarleton]

The rationale is understandable: "This is docu-drama, a gateway drug suitable for idle viewers, the way people come to watching history through drama, adding to the story … "

I suppose the rationale, in a word, is "television". I grew up with AJP Taylor, sometimes in a bow tie, doing pieces to camera without notes. That was considered amazing at the time, it wouldn't work now, because we're much more televisually literate and wouldn't stand for it. I agreed with both presenters - Susannah Lipscomb (herself no slouch on the telly) put it well, if done well, etc. etc.....I'm the owner of a serious history degree and still enjoy the good ones. I saw Dan Jones's progs about the Plantaganets and Wars of the Roses (a period I did not cover at university) and subsequently greatly enjoyed his books. Listening to MB and her contract stipulations made me think of her trainers.... I don't think the viewer gains by watching the presenter talking all the time. TV, to quote her nemesis AA Gill, is a very lookist medium.

[Richard Barrett]

Like everything else it's something that can be done well or badly, right? Although I imagine that budgetary restrictions often preclude the former.

[oddoneout]

I tend now not to even start watching those programmes which fall into the 'docudrama' category as in the past I've been put off by the attempts to turn such scenes into mini-epics, complete with overblown soundtracks.
Presenters dressing up can be silly but it can also illustrate a point about behaviour and customs(limitations on movement imposed by dress for instance), and enactors who do it to provide historically accurate(as far as possible) re-creations can similarly help one to visualise everyday life and particular events.
There was a programme about Pompeii recently which I would have chosen to watch except that the trailers of people in flappy clothes and gory make-up emoting all over the place put me off. I have an imagination - give me the facts, illustrate them with objects as necessary and I will do the rest.
Here endeth the grump.....