The British

I did actually watch the whole series - quite a trial for a person who is really fascinated by history, and expects to learn something from any history documentary series. But I was curious to see how it would all fit together (and to just what lengths the producers would go).

It's hard to categorise "The British", or even guess at what purposes the producers had in mind. An attempt to draw in and capture the notoriously short attention spans of the Reality TV / Soap Opera / celebrity generation? In fact the whole series reminded me exactly of those sorts of rah-rah TV productions that try to drum up support for a national team prior to a major international sporting event. Or like one of those expert commentary shows about football. It was not produced by the usual British documentary companies, but for Sky-TV (part of the Rupert Murdoch stable). Aha!

In a collection of really strange production decisions, one of the most bewildering was the choice of talking head 'expert' commentary. There were some of the usual smattering of history professors and expert authors, but they all seemed to have little of consequence to say. Presumably the producers didn't want to overtax viewers' mental capacity (or have them switching back to Big Brother).

But 'expert opinion' did not get much exposure anyway compared to actors, comedians, famous broadcasters, rock singers, musicians and footballers! I mean, I like and respect Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons and many of the other actors featured. Normally. But these are truly the worst lines these people have ever had to deliver, even in their bad films. And nearly all of the comments from all these last categories of commentators were about how these people "felt". Often not even about the specific historical event or trend being outlined, but in a general, vaguely propagandistic way, as if they were giving their opinion on why their favourite football team would win their game on the coming weekend. Relevant? Rarely. Weird? Nearly always.

Those are the really bad features. Obviously it's hard to give a potted history of more than 2,000 years of British history in seven 50-minute episodes, especially where people like Simon Schama have done it so well. So, if the purpose was to give the current generation an overview of British history that they would otherwise never have (or never have watched), then I suppose it fulfils that purpose. And with the epic battle scenes, currently in-trend computer graphical reconstructions and other such 'blockbuster' features, it is clear that this was the intention. So, if it does awaken curiosity about the past in those people and the wish to investigate further, so much the better.

But it says less about any particularly accurate or objective recounting of history. It silently says more about what thinking skills human beings are losing as a result of the passive 24-hour infotainment web we are being drawn into, as well as the increasingly lamentable state of western education. Some powers that be want us trained to work their jobs, indoctrinated to cheer for our manufactured heroes, but not generally educated to question what has been done in the past, what we can learn from it, what we are doing now, or why. That's what history documentary series usually do. This one don't. It's all Yay Team!

Let's hope this is not the start of a trend for historical documentaries. As it seemed to be such a flop, this is probably unlikely. After all, ratings are king in this world.

I thought the very last frame of the credits, announcing that it was a "nut-opia" production (my breakup of the word) said it all.

I am only half way through watching the first episode of the Hollywood/Disney-fied version of British History and find it appalling and disgusting. Have they had a 'Single' Historian on the programme? NO! Have they had loads of actors and actresses who are 'known' in USA on - YES. Do these people KNOW anything of British History HFNO!

Not a single person on the programme has read Tacitus or reviewed the historical archaeological evidence? NO

Showing WHITE 'North' European looking Romans invading Britain in 56AD... The romans and all people's of the Med. Sea region of that era were black as the ace of spades! IF they had read Tacitus and the records of the Roman Empire, they would know the reason for the invasion was the 'Angelic' look of the peoples, strong - sturdy - white or red hair, with Pale complexions, that fetched the highest price on in the Roman Slave Auctions!! The invasion was about MONEY! Not about land, Southern France and Egypt were the bread baskets... the 'midge' infested North! Why do people of Italy have blue eye's today, the slaves that were paid in tribute 'post-Budica'! I could tell it was tripe when they said it was 10,000 Romans who invaded Britain, it was 5 legions of 25,000 (per legion) just to 'impose' their military might and take slaves from the southern half of Britain. This programme is total fantasy and it should either never have been made or the producers should have consulted REAL HISTORIANS. I shall NOT be watching the rest of this Tripe as it can only get worse and there is far too much of 'bash the British' attitude in a few nations of the world.

The special effects are fine, the re-enactments are fine. But when interviewing people, they have only 2 or 3 historians in episode 1, and the rest is a bunch of random actors, broadcasters and other such people without any credentials to talk about history.

They also cherry-picked events arbitrarily. How come they have an episode about the celts and the romans and forget all about Caesar and Boudicca? Episode 1 covers the 400 years or so of roman ocupation, and then episode 2 brushes through saxon times, the viking age and the normans, so in episode 3 they can talk about Tudors.

I mean, come on! This is just being lazy. There's a massive amount of history in there and they just couldn't be bothered. It had a lot of wasted potential. Pity.

Though well produced this series should have been called the English. Complete lack of info outside of England full stop, quite disappointing really.

Where were the Vikings and the Saxons? Where were the wars of independence? Why was this predominantly about England and not the whole of Britain as the title implies?

Biased stories interspersed with a few celebrities saying how great us Brits are, what a load of rubbish.