Triceratops wrote:

This is a link to the archive of Chronicle programmes;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p013qs57/chronicle

The BBC has recently dusted down and rebroadcast 2 other classic documentary series from its archive:

The Ascent of Man (1973)

and

Civilisation (1969)  

Although I had heard of both, I had never seen either, so was grateful of the opportunity to finally do so. Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man about the history of science and technology, is simply terrific and has certainly stood the test of time. For me the stand-out episode is number 12 Generation upon Generation which looks at the history of genetics and the literally seminal work undertaken by the 19th Century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel. Bronowski has that special gift of being able to explain complex technical concepts in terms which the lay person can understand. Who would have thought that such unpromising material as the properties and propagation of garden peas could produce spellbinding television.

Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation about the history of Western art, music and architecture, probably hasn’t aged quite so well but it’s still excellent and well worth watching. In the first episode The Skin of Our Teeth and standing in front of a Viking longship, he quotes:

“’If there were a hundred tongues in each head’ said a contemporary Irish writer ‘they could not recount or narrate or enumerate or tell what all the Irish suffered of hardships and of injuring and of oppression in every house from these valiant, wrathful and purely pagan people.’ Celts haven’t changed much. ‘Purely pagan’.”

This could be one of the things which reportedly prompted the BBC to re-issue the series with an added notification that it reflected ‘standards and attitudes’ of the time. If it is, then I’m not even sure what Clark was trying to say there. Certainly the use of the term ‘Celt’ to describe Irish, Scottish and Welsh etc people has fallen out of currency over the last 20 years. That said, Kenneth Mackenzie Clark would almost certainly have included himself in that bracket, as he even mentioned in that very episode that he had spent much of his youth living not far from Iona.
 
There is a remarkable piece of camerawork from director Michael Gill to be seen at the end of episode 7 Grandeur and Obedience about the Counter-Reformation. In it, and after Clark has finished speaking, the camera glides backwards away from him down the vista of the spectacularly long Gallery of Maps in the Vatican. A truly wow moment.

I had seen parts of both series before but finally managed to complete both.  The BBC tried to do an update of Civilisation called Civilisations with three presenters but, in my opinion, it did not work as it lacked the consistency that Clark gave to Civilisation.  

There is a sense in which Bronowski is the more dated because of the huge technological and scientific advances that have occurred in the last fifty years.  As part of my combined science degree 1969 to 1972 I did a module on Astronomy and most of it is now completely out of date.  In 1973 the engineering manufacturer I was working for (my first engineering job) had one computer and a telex department.  

Tim