The news that BBC Factual has announced five new history commissions has not been met with unalloyed approbation. Viewers are to be treated to documentaries on Idi Amin, Islamic State, and the life of Michael Jackson, plus a visit to Edinburgh for David Olusoga’s popular A House Through Time, and a historical crime series with the unbearably twee title of Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club.

The recency bias of these commissions has disappointed many — not least me. Why can’t we have a series, say, on the Border Reivers or the Schleswig-Holstein Question? But what can also be detected in this choice of programmes is the dreaded search for relevance. Melvyn Bragg has always been clear that In Our Time’s rubric is “never knowingly relevant”, allowing it to jump from topics like the evolution of lungs to the Congress of Vienna. This has helped to secure a dedicated, even cult-like following. This is because it is one of the few refuges from the overt politicisation of much of the BBC’s output.

When considering history on TV it is impossible not to contrast recent, rather mediocre offerings with the grandeur of landmark series of the past. Consider The Ascent of Man, Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, or The World at War — narrated by none other than Laurence Olivier. It is hard to believe now, but at one time the tweedy Oxford don A.J.P. Taylor could command audiences of over 10 million — sandwiched between Doctor Kildare and the All-in Wrestling — for unscripted, straight-to-camera lectures on high-minded historical subjects such as the diplomacy of Otto von Bismarck or the causes of the Second World War.

Taylor was a brilliant storyteller, of whom it was said that he could “empty the pubs” by rendering the most complex historical narratives comprehensible to the general public. He always said that his work tried to answer the child’s questions, like “what happened next?” Many professional historians of the time thought that his narrative style and preoccupation with “Great Men” and high politics was old-fashioned, compared to the trendier schools of sociology and economics.

But if the astonishing growth of long-form history podcasting has shown anything, it is that there is a huge thirst for accessible narrative history. That has certainly been the case with The Rest is History, which has filled in the historical blanks for so many people who’ve arguably been let down by both the national curriculum and the national broadcaster.

To be fair to the BBC, it does face an uphill battle. The splintering of the media landscape makes it impossible to recreate the mass audiences of the past, but nor do rival podcasters feel the need to appeal to the metropolitan preoccupations of BBC producers.

One advantage that the BBC does retain, though, is its extraordinary archive. Here is an embarrassment of riches, in which I regularly immerse myself in everything from interviews with Victorian teenagers (2.2 million views on YouTube) to a 1961 film about Coventry after the Blitz (a less impressive 40,000 views). These programmes aren’t technically “relevant”, as current TV producers would understand the term. But they do keep me watching, and I would wager that I’m not the only one fascinated by these obscure visions of the past. The BBC would do well to keep that in mind.

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Dan Jackson is the author of the best-selling book The Northumbrians: The North East of England and its People. A New History, published by Hurst (2019)

 

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