Episodes watched in detail:
E2, "Age of Empire (sic)"
E3, "The Word and the Sword"
E7, "Age of Industry"
Has anyone seen this yet? personally, I like the way Andrew Marr presents world history - he presents it in a punchy tone, and a pithy manner, embellished with nothing but tongue-in-cheek yet appropriate one-liners - but one never ceases to feel that the historical reconstructions were not done well enough, more of the modern world could be censored out (fancy playing out a strike in Barcelona for a sketch on Socrates!), and also some facts our friend kinda got wrong.
Here's a list of problems:
• In E2, "Age of Empire", the Persians are depicted as being brown, Indian or Arab-looking guys. I nearly LOLed at the Battle of Marathon, because the Persians reminded me too much of the grunts one prods about in Age of Empires: Rise of Rome.
• Ditto, we won't talk about Alexander or the Olympics - that would be giving too much away - Super7700 will be angry at how they present the Greek phalanx - or rather, lack of it.
• In the same episode, Confucius is depicted as wearing yellow and a cap, and his sovereign bare-headed and a simple black robe. As a Chinese, I thought it would be the other way around!
• In E3, I'm not sure what Marr calls the Muslim call to prayer, but it's definitely not what Muslims call it themselves.
• For E3, BBC makes another boob again - Caesar is depicted with hair when in fact some say he was bald!
• In E7, "Age of Industry", Marr makes no note of the fact that the Tokugawa originally tried to modernise, but got ousted due to economic difficulties from unfair trade and anti-modernist settlement...by the Meiji rebels who surprisingly adopted modern weapons, ironclads and armour.
• Again, he kinda boobs the entire American Civil War, by implying that the abolition of slavery alone caused the CSA to fracture overnight.
• In the same, the Chinese official Lin Zexu is depicted as wearing amber. Not correct, the right colour of his robe should have been black.
Overall it all seems good, and I won't spoil you on the details - to be honest, you will probably find E7 "Age of Industry" interesting, but everything else feels a bit sloppy and slapdash - and despite the quality of the vids, it often feels that the Beeb were working on a shoestring budget, compared with the History channel's magnum opus "The Story of All of Us".
So, if you asked me, "Would you recommend it to others?" I would say, "Perhaps - since it's notMy Little Pony: Friendship is Magic". But if the question were "You've watched three episodes - would you watch the other five? sadly I would say, "I will just skim through on YouTube." Still, the Brits have made worse mistakes, so we will end this review here, and take a breath so you can add your comments!
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E2, "Age of Empire (sic)"
E3, "The Word and the Sword"
E7, "Age of Industry"
Has anyone seen this yet? personally, I like the way Andrew Marr presents world history - he presents it in a punchy tone, and a pithy manner, embellished with nothing but tongue-in-cheek yet appropriate one-liners - but one never ceases to feel that the historical reconstructions were not done well enough, more of the modern world could be censored out (fancy playing out a strike in Barcelona for a sketch on Socrates!), and also some facts our friend kinda got wrong.
Here's a list of problems:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Overall it all seems good, and I won't spoil you on the details - to be honest, you will probably find E7 "Age of Industry" interesting, but everything else feels a bit sloppy and slapdash - and despite the quality of the vids, it often feels that the Beeb were working on a shoestring budget, compared with the History channel's magnum opus "The Story of All of Us".
So, if you asked me, "Would you recommend it to others?" I would say, "Perhaps - since it's not
[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 11-26-2012 @ 09:32 PM).]