Roman gladiator cemetery in York

[Morsleib]

I can't make my mind up about the documentary. It was a fascinating subject and for once presented genuinly new information (to me at least). On the down side it skimmed over the evidence and jumped straight to the conclusions and the presentation was too jazzed up.

I may be a bit old fashioned but I prefer my documentaries with more meat and less special effects. I am intelligent enought to understand a bit of basic archaeology so please don't dumb down stuff like this.

Terry

[rasmus]

Terry, I agree - it where ok for background noice but not enough of a hard facts to entertainment ratio to draw my total attention, on the plus side I did get painted a bit while "watching" it

Rasmus

[Cubster]

Unfortunately the 'History Channel' has given rise to a plethora of 'chicken in a basket' style documentaries, with ultra-low budget slo-mo fight scenes and dodgy stick-on beards combined with multiple-repetition statements and clips, taking the place of in-depth intelligently delivered information. It's very much lowest common denominator delivering, in an hour, the same sort of level of education you could enjoy by reading a 'Horrible History' in quarter of an hour.

[Sev]

Sadly seems to be the way with a lot of documentary programmes. Stretch the material over 3 times the time needed and not because there isn't anything to say, it often appears. They just seem to skim off the top layer of detail and leave you with that. Could be they think we can't cope with more, aren't really interested or it is just the format they now work to.

Probably the latter, a bit like games shows (from what little I see). Explain what you are going to do, have a bit more intro, do it and then afterwards tell you what you have been shown! Perhaps they are hoarding facts against some future possible shortage when they may be needed?

John

[Phil]

Morsleib said:

I can't make my mind up about the documentary. It was a fascinating subject and for once presented genuinly new information (to me at least). On the down side it skimmed over the evidence and jumped straight to the conclusions and the presentation was too jazzed up.

I may be a bit old fashioned but I prefer my documentaries with more meat and less special effects. I am intelligent enought to understand a bit of basic archaeology so please don't dumb down stuff like this.

---

I fancy that the reasoning behind 'dumbing down' stuff like this is that by making it simple, more people will watch it. I strongly suspect that is bogus. Those who'd rather watch Eastenders or Pop Idol or whatever, will still watch them, leaving those who do want to watch decent documentaries frustrated by their lack of content and less likely to watch than they might have been, probably resulting in a drop in audience rather than a rise.

When I think back to programmes like 'Timewatch', 'Horizon' and others of that vintage, and compare them to the lame excuses for documentaries we get now, I could almost cry.

Phil

[Titus Flavius]

Compared with many documentaries nowadays, this one was actually quite smart. Of course, that really only serves to prove how low the lowest common denominator is these days.

Of course, you have to be ultra patient to put up with the fact that they stretch 30 mins material out over an hour...

[rasmus]

And to Phils list also need to be added "The world at War" with the voiceover talent of you know who ..