Jerusalem: Center of the World

This is a decent-enough historical overview of Jerusalem and the earlier portions reflect recent research. There is also some lovely photography. But the coverage of the post-Roman periods is uneven, uninspired and marred greatly by out-of-date stereotypes, particularly the treatment of the three religions who share the city: saintly-victim Jews, benevolent Muslim overlords and bloodthirsty Christian crusaders. When a documentary completely glosses over the destruction of Muslim Arab culture in the Levant perpetrated by 12th-century Kurdish general Saladin, in order to concentrate only on his eventual contest with the "foreign" Christians, you know there's a lack of balance. When the subsequent eight centuries are skipped over in the space of five minutes, to concentrate on how "wonderful" things are today, that shows some truly lumpy coverage. It's a two-hour documentary. There's just no excuse for practically ignoring that period. Not that any one group in the Holy Land was wonderful at all times--nor is it necessary to ignore the good points of the Muslim occupations of the city--but there are so many holes in this documentary that you'd probably learn more about Jerusalem from what they left out than from what they put in. Too bad. It's still recent and could have been so much better.