Year: 2011

In the UK: Sunday 8th May, 9pm, BBC1. Available on the iPlayer

Ah, drama documentaries? Is there a more benighted category of programming? The idea is simple: documentaries are dull things in which people who know stuff talk to you; a drama-documentary makes it all exciting, and it comes to life since it’s dramatised.

However, while there’s the occasional exception – usually when there’s a reasonably good amount of evidence to go on – the average drama-documentary combines the worst aspects of both dramas and documentaries: not enough information for a proper documentary, too little time to do a decent, well written story for a drama.

So it is with Atlantis, BBC1’s recent one-hour documentary about the Bronze Age volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini (aka Thera) that destroyed much of the island and pretty much ended the ‘Minoan’ civilisation that had thrived on both it and the nearby Crete for 1500 years. It was this that possibly inspired Plato’s tale of Atlantis over 1,000 years later. A combination of history documentary, geology documentary and a doomed romance, Atlantis wasn’t without its merits and indeed in some areas was very good, but it wasn’t on a par with any of the great Bettany Hughes’ documentaries on the subjects, even though she was one of its advisors.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Atlantis”