The narrator, Richard Miles, has the face of an actor but he wouldn't play the good guy. He'd be the snide villain. However, he sounds like a well-intentioned chap who is trying to entertain and enlighten us at the same time. Yes, modern perspectives are thrust into the narrative. He tells us at the outset that his purpose is "to find us - in them." I can see where his often opinionated approach might offend historians used to distanced judgments. I haven't finished watching the series but I rather enjoyed his rambling through the centuries so far.
The location photography is evocative and Miles tries to throw in a bit of humor from time to time. It's refreshing to hear an ancient letter read from a wife to her traveling salesman husband, complaining that he hasn't brought home enough shekels or whatever to make it possible for her to paint the house or -- better yet -- to build a home as big as those damned neighbors'. Miles comments: "Madam, four thousand years on, you still know how to make a man feel bad." I suppose these kinds of asides can be called sexist but I laughed out loud, partly because Miles tries so hard to make the letter amusing -- and fails. The letter is funny and Miles' remark is funny, but he's not. Some fellows can tell a joke and some can't.
He caught me off guard once or twice. I'm not a historian but a long time ago I had classes in archeology and I didn't know that Uruk was the first city. I'd learned it was Jericho. He deals with some of the big names like Leonard Wooley ("Ur of the Chaldees") but I'd never realized that Agatha Christie's archaeologist husband did some serious work in what was then Mesopotamia. The name of Abu Simbel was familiar but I never knew it was the site of a big battle between Egypt and another empire. I'll have to read or watch "Death on the Nile" again.
For what it's worth, Miles paints Egypt as a pretty dull place, a preserve that neither influenced any other culture nor was influenced by any. I suppose Leo Frobenius would disagree but I don't know. I enjoy those mammoth figures on their seats. The rest of it -- the pyramids and the sphinx -- is exotic and colorful. He mentions the incestuous pharaonic rulers in one sentence, only to dismiss them. He could have livened up the presentation by noting that, however boring, however obsessed with death, Egypt lasted about two millenia. That was a really long time for a "civilization." Ancient Greece flourished for about six hundred years, and, after all, Cleopatra came at the end but was charming enough to seduce two important Romans -- Julius Caesar when she was a teen, and Brutus when she was turning matronly. That's twelve generations of incest talking for you.
What kept occurring to me, throughout this first episode, is that it was pretty airy and uncoordinated. Miles' leaps through time and space left me wondering which century I was in and who it was that once lived in these geometrical ruins.
At the same time, I wondered about most of the students I've had, to whom all of these names and places are a vast lacuna on the wall of history. Anything -- however imperfect -- that would help them grasp the nature of our cultural origins would be an improvement.
The location photography is evocative and Miles tries to throw in a bit of humor from time to time. It's refreshing to hear an ancient letter read from a wife to her traveling salesman husband, complaining that he hasn't brought home enough shekels or whatever to make it possible for her to paint the house or -- better yet -- to build a home as big as those damned neighbors'. Miles comments: "Madam, four thousand years on, you still know how to make a man feel bad." I suppose these kinds of asides can be called sexist but I laughed out loud, partly because Miles tries so hard to make the letter amusing -- and fails. The letter is funny and Miles' remark is funny, but he's not. Some fellows can tell a joke and some can't.
He caught me off guard once or twice. I'm not a historian but a long time ago I had classes in archeology and I didn't know that Uruk was the first city. I'd learned it was Jericho. He deals with some of the big names like Leonard Wooley ("Ur of the Chaldees") but I'd never realized that Agatha Christie's archaeologist husband did some serious work in what was then Mesopotamia. The name of Abu Simbel was familiar but I never knew it was the site of a big battle between Egypt and another empire. I'll have to read or watch "Death on the Nile" again.
For what it's worth, Miles paints Egypt as a pretty dull place, a preserve that neither influenced any other culture nor was influenced by any. I suppose Leo Frobenius would disagree but I don't know. I enjoy those mammoth figures on their seats. The rest of it -- the pyramids and the sphinx -- is exotic and colorful. He mentions the incestuous pharaonic rulers in one sentence, only to dismiss them. He could have livened up the presentation by noting that, however boring, however obsessed with death, Egypt lasted about two millenia. That was a really long time for a "civilization." Ancient Greece flourished for about six hundred years, and, after all, Cleopatra came at the end but was charming enough to seduce two important Romans -- Julius Caesar when she was a teen, and Brutus when she was turning matronly. That's twelve generations of incest talking for you.
What kept occurring to me, throughout this first episode, is that it was pretty airy and uncoordinated. Miles' leaps through time and space left me wondering which century I was in and who it was that once lived in these geometrical ruins.
At the same time, I wondered about most of the students I've had, to whom all of these names and places are a vast lacuna on the wall of history. Anything -- however imperfect -- that would help them grasp the nature of our cultural origins would be an improvement.
