Treasures Decoded

I'm a documentary hound, and I love a good science mystery. I had high hopes for this series because it's from The Smithsonian Channel. I was disappointed.

The narrator's enunciation is a little annoying. He may have trained under Robert Clotworthy. This wouldn't be such an issue except the narration is inane and repetitive. It's also inane and repetitive. Perhaps it was written by a graduate of the Redundancy School of Redundancy.

At any rate, the experts consulted, by and large, seem to have very little expertise. None of them seem to realize that Mt Ararat isn't in the Mountains Of Ararat, and that Mt Ararat wasn't even called that until fairly recently. Also, the Tower of Babel wasn't in Babylon and the two names aren't even slightly related. Nevertheless, they hammer away at it for over an hour, undaunted by well established archaeological facts. All the secrets that are written in blood and gold and stone are still well kept secrets by the end of this series. And while the photography is amazing, much of it is recycled from other, better documentaries.

Annoying, misinformative, AND uniformative. Would not recommend.

The episode I watched (largely about Hadrian's wall) could have been done in ten minutes. The content was limited and comprised largely of what the Victorians would have called a 'penny-dreadful', dwelling as it does on the same characters being killed over and over again. There was an unconvincing reconstruction of a ballista - a long-range weapon being used at only a few metres, penetrating a thin looking piece of plywood and some offerings from the meat counter. Other reviewers have mentioned historical inaccuracies.

My attention span, such as it is, is somewhate greater than 60 seconds so my wife and I had to turn it off before drove us crazy.