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    Great classic BBC docu-series

    The three specific ones that I have in mind (all from the '70s or very late '60s - that marvelous era of optimistic missionary highbrow broadcasting) are:

    Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man

    Kenneth Clark's Civilisation; and

    Alastair Cooke's America.

    and of course the generic category of David Attenborough natural history series, beginning with Life on Earth

    What other examples are there of that kind of broad-sweep, learned, distinctively individual and engagingly presented highbrow educational documentary series?

    Of course, the very personal nature of the perspectives reflected in the above three series (especially Clark and Cooke) will mean that some will be annoyed by them. And as an ignoramus on most matters of the arts -certainly the visual arts - I'm reporting a common view of Civilisation rather than daring any opinion of my own. Edit: I remember being bewildered as a boy by the Monty Python Papperbook piss-take of the publicity still photo of Kenneth Clark with the (Python!) caption "Are you civilised? Have you been civilised recently?"

    #2
    Great classic BBC docu-series

    Simon Schama's History of Britain was a fascinating series that gave a different perspective to what most schools taught in lessons.
    Not a BBC series, but Thames TV, though definitely worthy of mention is Jeremy Isaac's World at War which considering it was made in the early seventies, way before t'internet and such like, was a marvel of research and dedication.

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      #3
      Great classic BBC docu-series

      What other examples are there of that kind of broad-sweep, learned, distinctively individual and engagingly presented highbrow educational documentary series?
      Mark Cousin's recent 15 part history of film on Channel 4 was a great example of this kind of ambitious, subjective, gloriously detailed series.

      Carl Sagan's Cosmos?

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        #4
        Great classic BBC docu-series

        I've been loving Andrew Graham-Dixon's various series on the art of Spain, Germany, Russia and the USA, on BBC4. They have the old-fashioned virtue of letting him talk, though what he says isn't very Clarkish.

        You never, ever, ever see anything about science that respects its audience so much, with the exception of the natural-history stuff from Attenborough.

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          #5
          Great classic BBC docu-series

          'The People's Century' from 1996 was one I really enjoyed, especially the earlier episodes where they interviewed elderly people who were born around the turn of the 20th century. They had some great anecdotes, often laced with gallows humour.

          I remember one in particular from an American soldier sailing to France in 1917. I visited the Statue of Liberty in 1997 - about a year after that episode was screened - and couldn't get the man's quote out of my head.

          Here it is-

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            #6
            Great classic BBC docu-series

            Wyatt (and anyone else), did you watch the Robert Hughes programmes in the 80s and 90s? I enjoyed Dixon's BBC4 things, but the US one couldn't help but remind me how much better Hughes' American Visions was. It's up on YouTube if anyone fancies a gander. Really opened up the rarefied world of the visual arts for me when I was 20, that one.

            I also watched his The Shock of the New (from 1980) for the first time recently - it's awe-inspiring.

            Another vote for the Mark Cousins epic too.

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              #7
              Great classic BBC docu-series

              The recent Cousins series was wonderful, the equal of Brownlow & Gill's 1980 Hollywood, on the silent era. James Mason narrated it.

              It used to go out at 9pm Tuesday nights on the entire ITV network. Chances of that happening these days?

              Conversely, I thought The World At War to be dull and poorly researched even at first viewing, particularly the use of actuality footage - for instance, there's a lot in the Battle of Briain sequences that's from USAAF camera gun films over Europe in 1944-45.

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                #8
                Great classic BBC docu-series

                I followed The World at War avidly in the '70s when it was new or newish. I think it must have been an early repeat that I saw as I was only 9 when the first showing of the series started and I think I must have been more like 11 or 12 when I saw it. Even as it was, my parents didn't allow me to watch the genocide episode in case it was too distressing.

                I remember finding it hugely informative and powerful at the time, but obviously my critical frame of reference at that age would have been a little thin. I think nowadays I would get too irritated by the way they dub over all the witnesses who are speaking in foreign languages. (I'm particularly irritated by that as "my" languages are German and Russian which of course crop up rather a lot in this context, but I find dubbing very irritating even when the original is a language I don't speak, as I like to hear the rhythm and tone of the actual witness and subtitles are perfectly good if you can give the screen your full attention instead of half-watching something in multi-task mode.)

                I also note there are some pretty scathing reviews on amazon of the remastered DVDs of the series, regarding what the remastering has done to it.

                I'm very glad I started this thread btw, as I have enjoyed finding out about the series others have mentioned, and plan to watch some of them in due course.

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                  #9
                  Great classic BBC docu-series

                  oldjack wrote:
                  The recent Cousins series was wonderful, the equal of Brownlow & Gill's 1980 Hollywood, on the silent era. James Mason narrated it.
                  It was scheduled for a DVD release and infact may have actually reached the shelves for a brief period before a slew of copyright claims landed on the desk. It won't see a commercial release for years now. A VHS box set from the '90s can be found kicking about if you search around.

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                    #10
                    Great classic BBC docu-series

                    The earlyish (late-70s?)series that irritated me no end but I watched compulsively was James Burke's Connections. At the time I thought well yeah, big deal, so things — events, inventions — are connected, we all know that, Duh! So I tended to watch with a cloud of greeny-grey smugness floating over my head. TBH I was deeply envious of the opportunity Burke had been given, as were others I imagine. I would have chosen different connections, which was the point I now realise. Thinking laterally — Edward de Bono was hot at the time — like that was something many people either don't do, or don't realise they do. In that sense the show was highlighting a learning process as much as it was informational content, which was something I'm not sure TV had attempted before. I'd be interested in watching it again, if only to find out whether it pisses me off as much as it did the first time through.

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                      #11
                      Great classic BBC docu-series

                      I've seen a few episodes of the HD version of The World At War and the criticisms seem fair enough if you have seen the original. If you haven't, you might not notice it as much. If you're after that sort of thing, the BBC produced The Great War in 1964 in conjunction with CBC and ABC, and that is magnificent. Cold War, the CNN series voiced by Kenneth Branagh, has never been released on DVD because of complications over the reclassification of previously declassified footage after 9/11, apparently. Worth hunting out if you can find a copy.

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                        #12
                        Great classic BBC docu-series

                        George

                        Wiki's Brownlow entry re Hollywood
                        In North America, the series was released in 1990 by HBO Video on VHS and laserdisc. Attempts to release the series on DVD in the UK in 2006 were met with legal entanglements of copyright issues and clip clearances, due to the overwhelming number of participants and film clips involved in the series, although it had been briefly made available in a few online stores in the UK before being quickly pulled.
                        Damn! It must have been a very brief foray into the market - I was unaware of it at the time. I don't remember it ever turning up on any digital channels - bloody Sky Arts will no doubt end up with it.

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                          #13
                          Great classic BBC docu-series

                          Lucia Lanigan wrote:
                          I also watched [Robert Hughes] The Shock of the New (from 1980) for the first time recently - it's awe-inspiring.

                          Another vote for the Mark Cousins epic too.
                          Seconded, on both counts. The Shock of the New, in particular. I loved that when BBC4 re-showed it about three years ago. Thanks for YouTube link, I'll be watching them again.

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                            #14
                            Great classic BBC docu-series

                            Why at Last! wrote:
                            You never, ever, ever see anything about science that respects its audience so much, with the exception of the natural-history stuff from Attenborough.
                            Yeah, that bugs me too. I'll watch these things whenever I can because they're better than anything else that's on, but they could be so much better.

                            In my experience as an interested (and, I hope, moderately intelligent) layman, they're sumptuous to behold but I don't learn much about the subject that I didn't know before, aside from biographical trivia about the scientists involved. It's all very frustrating.

                            And they play the same bloody music on every programme, no matter whose personal journey of discovery it is.

                            The best thing I've seen in years, and the one thing that avoids all this, is Inside Nature's Giants, which although not an epic, has taught me about a thousand times more of what I didn't know before than anything Brian Cox, much as I like him, has ever done.

                            On the other hand, it's churlish to be too harsh. No other country produces anything like the quality of scientific and documentary films and series that the UK - and most prominently the BBC - does.

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                              #15
                              Great classic BBC docu-series

                              How about Ken Burns' "The Civil War"? I remember the BBC showing it in the mornings at this time of year a while ago. It got me interested in something I only had no idea about.

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                                #16
                                Great classic BBC docu-series

                                Oh man, yeah, that was great. It got me through a tricky history exam with flying colours as well.

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                                  #17
                                  Great classic BBC docu-series

                                  Lucia: I don't think I caught all of American Visions, but I saw mucb of it, and it was indeed superb. That's perhaps why I found A G-D's USA series less compelling than the ones on Germany and Russia. Part of the reason, too, is that I knew little about German visual art, and less about Russian, before those series.

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                                    #18
                                    Great classic BBC docu-series

                                    Ways Of Seeing, on art and the image, by the wonderfully pompous and self-assured John Berger. It's like listening to someone who is off their head on coke but actually making complete sense.

                                    On The Edge, a brilliantly simple idea of following the idea of improvisation in music wherever it is found, from Nashville to the Punjab, by the wonderfully down to earth improvising guitarist Derek Bailey.

                                    Neither of these are that long, both are four parters, but they certainly fit into the category of being personal, opinionated and brilliantly conceived.

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                                      #19
                                      Great classic BBC docu-series

                                      The bits where Berger's with the Hackney Labour Women are unintentionally funny. Reminds me of having some right-on bloke pinch my girlfriend in my first year of university.

                                      Partly because of that, and because I think lefties are always having a go at me personally, I didn't use to like Ways of Seeing. It is very good though.

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                                        #20
                                        Great classic BBC docu-series

                                        Ken Burns' is sort of a weird guy, but I like all of his, especially Baseball, Prohibition, and Thomas Jefferson. I have only seen some of his on The Civil War and Jazz.

                                        There was one on the history of English (the language). That was good. I don't recall who did it.

                                        The History Channel's series on the American War for Independence is good. They used to show it every July 4.

                                        Frontline's From Jesus to Christ and the follow-up on the early history of Christianity are excellent.

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                                          #21
                                          Great classic BBC docu-series

                                          Robert MacLean did a history of English for PBS and Melvyn Bragg did one for ITV.

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                                            #22
                                            Great classic BBC docu-series

                                            Nigelwyn wrote:
                                            How about Ken Burns' "The Civil War"? I remember the BBC showing it in the mornings at this time of year a while ago. It got me interested in something I only had no idea about.
                                            I think this was on BBC2 in the early 90s, excellent and I agree with you on the fact that it educated me so much about a topic I knew little about.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Great classic BBC docu-series

                                              Burns's Civil War is impressive, but it has caught a fair bit of flak for its over-reliance on Shelby Foote, whose take on the war at a minimum glosses over a lot of uncomfortable truths. On this sort of subject, I highly recommend this recent article by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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