Cycling Hannibals trail, BBC4 Tonight 20.30

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Ste T.

Guru
History and travel series in which three Australian brothers - Danny, Ben and Sam Wood - set out cycling on the trail of Hannibal, the ancient warrior who marched from Spain to Rome at the head of an invading army accompanied by elephants.Looks worth watching.
 

arallsopp

Post of The Year 2009 winner
Location
Bromley, Kent
Sounds good.

But how much better by moving a single comma?

History and travel series in which three Australian brothers - Danny, Ben and Sam Wood - set out cycling on the trail of Hannibal the ancient warrior who marched from Spain to Rome, at the head of an invading army accompanied by elephants.
 
Liked it, maybe a bit clunky in places but thats okay - it's pretty obvious they're being accompanied by a film crew and car rather than just touring so the cycling element seems like a bolt on to give it a unique selling point. I did see one bit where they seemd to forget their panniers all of a sudden but that's no problem. It was enjoyable. But it would be better if they were accompanied by elephants.
 

montage

God Almighty
Location
Bethlehem
watched this and thought it was crap
 

SamfWood

New Member
Cheers God!

We were accompanied by a film crew in parts. We carried a camera too and the cycling definitely wasn't bolt on, I've done a fair bit of touring and these were very long days riding. Often the filming took so long that we would start riding very late in the day.

Anyway the cycling and history gets more serious as we go on, the first episode is a bit of a warm up!

PS would have loved to have elephants and we tried but no chance! Health and safety etc etc!!
 
Oh didn't realise it was you...
What I meant by a bolt on was that the cycling seemed to be a friendly thing to hang the history on rather than just three blokes pointing at things and stating facts (or, conversely, riding through Spain, France and Italy and having a nice time). As for having a film crew, thats just the way these things have to be done (Bear Girls...) and since at least one of you has a Hewitt you have taste.
You could have CGI'd the elephants in though. Or had a photo of an elephant close to the camera so it looked it was a real elephant but far away. Thats how I would have done it.
 

ASC1951

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
watched this and thought it was crap

Same here. Well, maybe not crap, but certainly not good enough to keep me watching for more than quarter of an hour. I know a lot about Hannibal and a fair bit about cycle touring and this was pretty lightweight on both.

I blame the commissioning editors at the Beeb. Go to them with "I want to do this series on building Hadrian's Wall - great scenery, lots of proper history" and you will get "Nah. Too serious - no-one will watch it. You need Human Interest. Drag in a dozen teenagers, half of them trying to lose weight and the other half looking for jobs, dress them up as legionaries and feed them on Roman food, stick them in tents, bit of sobbing and swearing - that's a proper documentary. You can do the heavy history bit with some hairy boffin from Newcastle University giving it a couple of minutes every now and then."

It's exactly the same with science. The Beeb's core belief is that the audience is so stupid, vacuous and ill-informed that you cannot get across any serious ideas except by having a minor sleb front it, doling ideas out in five minute bursts and mixing it with lots of jokes to give us time to catch up. There is an intellectual arrogance and smugness in the Beeb which is rather depressing.
 

Chrisc

Guru
Location
Huddersfield
Same here. Well, maybe not crap, but certainly not good enough to keep me watching for more than quarter of an hour. I know a lot about Hannibal and a fair bit about cycle touring and this was pretty lightweight on both.

I blame the commissioning editors at the Beeb. Go to them with "I want to do this series on building Hadrian's Wall - great scenery, lots of proper history" and you will get "Nah. Too serious - no-one will watch it. You need Human Interest. Drag in a dozen teenagers, half of them trying to lose weight and the other half looking for jobs, dress them up as legionaries and feed them on Roman food, stick them in tents, bit of sobbing and swearing - that's a proper documentary. You can do the heavy history bit with some hairy boffin from Newcastle University giving it a couple of minutes every now and then."

It's exactly the same with science. The Beeb's core belief is that the audience is so stupid, vacuous and ill-informed that you cannot get across any serious ideas except by having a minor sleb front it, doling ideas out in five minute bursts and mixing it with lots of jokes to give us time to catch up. There is an intellectual arrogance and smugness in the Beeb which is rather depressing.

It's called LCD tv. Lowest common denominator.
 
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