A House Through Time.
Season 4
Episode 1, this was a great start, a fabulous high Victorian house with clearly a rich history. I would make two minor points, the death penalty exists in societies that have less enforcement and hence tend towards retributivism or cannot financially support long term incarceration hence deportation. David fails to mention here, not what the current woke views are on child labour and the death penalty but what did the Victorians actually think about these things at the time (text and context) Secondly the pace and repetition of the show, it was glacially slow and everything was repeated three times, come on let's crack on with this at a pace, I heard it the first time, you do have a knowing adult audience here.
Episode 2, was a total triumph, the pace picked up, just tons of detail, perspective and context. David's conclusions and analysis were brilliant in using the occupants of the house as a window into different occupations, countries, diseases and customs. This was history brought to life!
Episode 3, David covered 3 people connected to our house, he very cleverly chose people from the various families that would allow him to show facets of domestic or world history. Whilst totally delightful this technique runs into problems when the history becomes overwhelmingly rich and, we the viewer, are snatched away with just a fleeting glance. Mostly David gets the balance right but sometimes, like this episode, I felt cheated. My suggestion, if it really gets fascinating allow one person to take over a complete episode on indeed tack on another episode, also I would want to immerse David in the trenches, shove him into uniform and strap him in a straitjacket, it all may sound flippant but it all makes history alive. I really thought David quite brilliantly analysed the documentary evidence and not once conjectured beyond the detail. The same cannot be said of the other contributors "Rayon was the democratisation of fashion", well that's not true, or Theosophy was a place where "women had a voice as they had no voice elsewhere", again not true. Both these viewpoints are woke tropes and beyond what they thought at the time.
Episode 4, David surpassed himself here, waxing lyrical about the 130 past residents of the house, it was a very moving conclusion to a spectacular series of programmes.
Now looking back over the last few series it is self-evident David rivals Mary with his skills and abilities in bringing history to life. These shows represent the very best of BBC broadcasting and their ability to invest in a new idea, no other Chanel could achieve this level of excellence.
Roll on series 5.