fri 29/03/2024

Seven Ages of Britain, BBC One | reviews, news & interviews

Seven Ages of Britain, BBC One

Seven Ages of Britain, BBC One

A load of old posh: David Dimbleby concludes his tour of British art

Gilbert and George and Dimbers go through the motions in Seven Ages of Britain
Seven Ages of Britain began in the same week as A History of the World in 100 Objects on Radio 4. You wait a prodigiously long time for a massive cultural overview and then two come along at once. Do they think in a joined-up way about these things at the BBC? Or has this double helping been a sign of a wider moral and structural chaos that characterises the new world disorder? Last night David Dimbleby concluded his tour of two millennia of British art. It has, inevitably, been a bit of a sprint. In this final episode, the horror of the trenches was wrapped up in less screen time than it took to show Tracey Emin’s new line animation of a woman, legs splayed and frenetically wanking. Chaos? I think so.
Seven Ages of Britain began in the same week as A History of the World in 100 Objects on Radio 4. You wait a prodigiously long time for a massive cultural overview and then two come along at once. Do they think in a joined-up way about these things at the BBC? Or has this double helping been a sign of a wider moral and structural chaos that characterises the new world disorder? Last night David Dimbleby concluded his tour of two millennia of British art. It has, inevitably, been a bit of a sprint. In this final episode, the horror of the trenches was wrapped up in less screen time than it took to show Tracey Emin’s new line animation of a woman, legs splayed and frenetically wanking. Chaos? I think so.

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An excellent review, though I would question if Dimbleby and Kenneth Clark are in the same league in terms of poshness - or anything else. Ghastly though Clark was in many respects, 'Civilization' remains on its own level sublime. I doubt they'll be holding conferences on Dimbleby's series in 40 years time as they have been doing with Clark's.

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