Viking Dead

Exceedingly dull series thats only purpose is seemingly to give a certain, apparently professional academic (who works often with this 'director'/producer- odd) unnecessary amounts of screen time and overseas jollies - where he doesn't visit archaeological sites but only reconstructions and kinda old fashioned museum exhibitions to make banal statements about waterways being used to travel (whaaat.... ?! By boat building communities, holy-stating-the-obvious Batman) and ask the kinds of question that would come out of the mouth of a 7 year old who's reading Horrible Histories for the first time.

Shame as there's been in some interesting recent new material culture, evidence and hypothesis come along but these are all ignored or skated over in order to repeat that the Viking age started with the raid on Lindesfarne and then contradict that, and then state Vikings were just pagan raders of Northern England but no, wait, they were traders well before that.... its actually a gift to be able to write and have a series commissioned off such a poor script (from the mind of that same 'director'/ producer) that repeats and contradicts and repeats and contradicts and repeats and contradicts and... (get the picture ?!) the same nonsense over SIX eps.

I kept on as there are some notable talking heads involved so you keep hoping its going somewhere -the Chair of Arch at Uppsala, some curators from interesting museums, researchers from Tallinn Uni and Gotland but they're not given much of a chance to bring anything interesting to the table (or its all edited out by someone who knows very little about the topic)

The benefit of the series is I now know to avoid anything from Jeremy Freeston, and take with a pinch of salt anything starring (cough) Tim Sutherland.

Unfocussed programmes which reveals little in a long time. Dreary. Vague. Inconsequential. 5 minutes of information in an hour slot. TimeWasters rather than TimeTeam? Not particularly useful re-enactments. Suspect the production team are just a re-enactment mob looking to be on the telly?. Tim Sutherland looks lost. Agree with most views made about their previous outing on Medieval Dead. Unless you're stuck in front of the TV for medical reasons, don't waste your time.

This is a series for the truly interested and informs well. Both the presenter and narrator are clearly passionate and knowledgeable about their area. I only wish there were more such series....see medieval dead