In The Footsteps Of Alexander The Great - (BBC 2, Tuesday)
Billion Dollar Funfairs - (ITV, Tuesday)
Cumbrian Tales - (BBC 2, Wednesday)
The Twelfth - (ITV, Monday)
Prime Time - (RTE 1, Monday)
It has been more than 2,300 years since Alexander the Great embarked on his 22,000-mile march from Macedonia through the Persian empire (with a detour into Egypt) and on to India. However, nomads on the plains of central Asia still tell tales about Al - many s ay he had horns and was, in fact, the devil. Even today, Iranians sometimes cajole their children to go to bed with the threat that bogey-man Alexander might otherwise get them. Humans, we can see, tend not to take kindly to others - especially uniformed others - marching through their territory.
Historian Michael Wood is the latest BBC epicjourney presenter. With Michael Palin retired, assessing Wood's performance in Palin's footsteps is almost as engrossing as watching him tread in the footsteps of Alexander. Wood has certainly got the sub-Indiana Jones wardrobe: boots, hats, shorts, in the rust and dun shades favoured by the makers of twee, overpriced, Sunday supplement desert casuals. He's also got a hell of a yarn. Alexander the Great, though he died when he was 33, did (thanks, of course, to the excellence of his army) make a lasting mark on human history.
On the evidence of Son Of God, the first episode of In The Footsteps Of Alexander The Great, Michael Wood just might make a lasting mark on TV. In spite of the too-new, designer threads, he looks the part and his script, while perhaps just a shade too enthusiastic, generally strikes the right tone. That tone is a balancing act between making Alexander seem at once familiar and unapproachable. If he is too much the god-like creature of myth, only the most deluded, egomaniacal viewers can identify with him; if he is too ordinary . . . well, what's the big deal?
We can take it that Alexander was neither ordinary nor, in spite of his own delusions, a god. The son of a king and queen and taught for three years by Aristotle, he did have the kind of early advantages that connections bestow. It would seem too that his earliest motivation - at least in terms of his public life - was revenge. The Persians had hammered the Greeks, including the Macedonians, a century and a half before Alexander came to power at the age of 16.
His father, Philip, had seven wives and his mother, Olympias, is said to have been manipulative and to have slept with snakes. Clearly, some forms of career women have been around for a long time. Anyway, whether in spite of, or because of, his dysfunctional, privileged family, Alexander decided to sort out Persia, then the centre of the largest empire in the world. He was "lucky, obstinate and didn't always think things out ahead" said Wood. Mind you, he regularly consulted oracles, so it wasn't as though his attitude to the future was devil may care.
There was, continued Wood, "a Jekyll and Hyde" aspect to Alexander. He was at once a visionary and a tyrant. The Alexandria he founded outside Cairo was "a centre of world culture to compete with Athens itself". Sometimes though, cultured Al bolstered his military reputation by acts of ruthlessness and barbarism. "He was a man obsessed with his own myth and with creating it as he went along," said Wood. "He was an opportunist and a visionary rolled into one and that made him unpredictable and dangerous."
In recent years, the BBC has produced similar histdoc (sorry!) series on the Mongols and the Crusades. But even Genghis Khan - quite an influential figure in his day - didn't receive such undiluted Great Man treatment as Wood is lavishing on Alexander. Certainly, Al was an exceptional bloke. But he didn't, in spite of the impression created here, subdue half the world by himself. Most myths and legends, of course (just like Hello! magazine) personalise history.
With three more episodes to come, we've got to hope that Michael Wood will explain the political world of Alexander's time with as much enthusiasm as he has devoted to his personal qualities. In fairness, history taught by television in this way is not only educational but engrossing. The great pity would be to perpetuate the myth that human progress is characteristically forged by powerful loners. Powerful and extraordinary individuals count, of course. But the forgotten millions who lived in Alexander's time helped shape the world too. In fact, they built it.
The shape of the world to come was the subject of Billion Dollar Funfairs. With the allegedly crass and witless Godzilla opening this weekend, this was a timely reminder that "in future, movies will be more like theme parks and theme parks will be more like movies". Hollywood will continue to be driven, not by human stories, but by special effects technology. Films will be commissioned on the basis of whether or not they can have a viable funfair spin-off. That way, they continue to make money for years after people have even stopped renting the videos.
It would be churlish to deride the technology which makes, say, Universal Studios' theme parks possible. Some of it is, literally, amazing and its next generation will leave the current stuff looking like a 1950s seaside carnival. But, really, it's all about making billions of dollars by supplying castrated adventures for families. "They know they're safe and yet they're afraid and that leads to laughter," said a gloating theme park financier.
Perhaps one of the greatest ironies about these new, hi-tech funfairs is the fact that a number of movies have been made about them going wrong. Westworld (1973) had a crazed, robot gunman on the loose. Jurassic Park and even, to some degree, King Kong, attacked the evil of trying to tame and manage phenomena for private gain and the public's amusement. But Hollywood, of course, has it both ways. It makes its little morality tales and then exploits them for all they're worth.
Anyway, these theme parks continue to expand at an alarming rate. Even on a small, 2-D television screen, it was possible to discern how new 3-D technology (applied to Terminator 2) could be as thrilling as an, albeit sanitised, hallucinogenic trip. But, you've got to be uneasy about it too. Hollywood, with its incessant and shameless self-promotion, has been the propaganda success story of the 20th century. Most of its output, though consistently technically superb, is intellectually and emotionally repulsive.
There are exceptions, of course, and there are still bright, articulate people working in Hollywood. But they are being pushed out all the time by the money hucksters. Billion Dollar Funfairs, was, despite its own technical expertise, basically an ad for the hucksters. Perhaps in the next century, ordinary films will become what books became in the last 30 years. Technology and multimedia promise much and could deliver both information and entertainment magnificently.
But, driven by a parasitic strain of capitalism, a hugely disproportionate amount of its resources is being directed towards making money out of people made thick by incessant thrill-seeking. As a test audience for a new Twister "experience" in Florida (as if the real thing wasn't enough there!) spilled out, they were interviewed. With their shiny hair, teethbraces and $200 sneakers, two strapping teenage girls gave their verdict. What did they say? Go on, guess! Yes, they said it was "ossum". Really exciting? "Yeah, ossum, just ossum." We can take it that vocabulary will not be best served by the billion dollar funfairs.
It would be difficult to find much greater contrast in the English-speaking world than that between Florida and Cumbria. A new docusoap, set in the village of Ireby, was as rich in undercurrent as Universal Studios is lavish in ostentation. "I've always been told that you shouldn't go too far away for either your stock bull or your wife," said an old bloke in Cumbrian Tales. Roddy, a local, biggish-house farmer, was not taking such advice.
In fact, Roddy was about to marry Ros, a Soho advertising executive. Cut to Ros and friends enjoying a hen-lunch in a central London wine-bar. The women agreed that the older Roddy was "very sexy, very rugged, very leathery". Ros detailed, in a manner which may not have best pleased Ireby folk, how Roddy proposed and how, afterwards they had, what she termed, a celebratory "shag". It wasn't the form of celebration but the frankness of talking about it which would ruffle Irebyites.
As in many rural areas, there is seething local resentment to newcomers buying homes in the village. "My kids should be living in your house but they can't afford to. They have to live in a caravan," a shepherd told a yuppie in the village pub. This assertion was every bit as frank as Ros telling her hen-pals about the "shag". It would, however, probably be considered impolite to say such a thing in a London wine-bar. Cumbrian Tales is promising. Made by Patrick McCreanor, who lives in Ireby, he may yet need it to make him enough money to relocate.
And so to the North. Above ancient Macedonia, Persia and Egypt, contemporary America and conservative Cumbria, the North dominated the week. Sky News, in fairness, did get the early pictures throughout the ghastly and ugly weekend. On the morning of the deaths of the three Quinn boys, it interviewed Ian Paisley. In the midst of such horror, Paisley looked shaken and old, although he did not appear to be taking any responsibility for the effects of his trademark rabble-rousing.
He did though, produce a classic Freudian slip. Condemning the fire-bombing as heinous, he described it as a "republic" act, before correcting himself to say "repulsive". It was a moment, perhaps meaningless, perhaps crystallised with meaning. Whatever the case, it was unforgettable and ranks alongside Albert Reynolds's celebrated and revealing reference to John Bruton as "John Unionist".
On Monday, The Twelfth was understandably, embarrassed and apologetic for showing the Orange parades. It was no day for celebration and everybody knew that little, white coffins would follow the next day. Prime Time was told by Francis Quinn, an uncle of the dead children, that even since the tragedy, some unionists/loyalists had given him "the fingers". An Orange Order spokesman said that if the Quinn family had asked, they would have rerouted the local parade away from the burned house. Good grief! If they had asked!
Television has not been kind to the Orangemen this year. Then again, they are so seldom kind to any but their own that they can have no complaint. Of course, there are decent people within the Order. But we have seen too - and much of the thanks must go to TV - that, in effect, Orangeism is supremacist and therefore, ineluctably bigoted. People born into such a tradition are one matter. Their poisonous and perverse media apologists from outside - ideological fellow-travellers (or, more correctly, fellow-marchers) - have their own kind of shame to deal with, even if it behoves none of us to be triumphalistic about their routing.