Civilisations

The BBC's long-awaited sequel to their groundbreaking 1969 documentary series Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark (Not That One) has controversially opted for the lesser used sequel naming convention first popularised by the Alien movie franchise.

The nine-part series is split between three different presenters, with Simon Schama taking all the odd numbered episodes, Mary Beard parts two and four, and David Olusoga the remaining parts. I was not acquainted with Olusoga before seeing him in this, but I was very impressed by what I saw - particularly the episode First Contact, which was centred on Captain Picard's unresolved issues with the Borg art inspired by the clashes between different cultures - in the future I will be looking out for other series presented by him.

With hindsight Simon Schama seems the obvious choice for main presenter, with his 2006 series Power of Art practically being a dummy run for the style used in his episodes of Civilisations - especially apparent when the subject matters cross over, such as when Caravaggio, Rembrandt or Van Gogh (each the subjects of a Power of Art episode) make their appearances in this.

Civilisations does a remarkably good job at counterpointing the original Civilisation without too much overlap. While the old series was (almost exclusively) focused on the culture of "Western" Europe and America, the new one goes global. Sadly, with only nine parts to cover the whole of history and the whole of the world, there is obviously not enough room to cover everything - I think music, which was a big part of the old series, misses out the most.

The biggest issue with the series, however, is that once you have noticed Simon Schama's eccentric way of pronouncing the word mountain "mounTAIN", you can't unnotice it.

Since Lord Clark's original series came out there have been multiple versions of the spin-off computer game Civilization, of which my favourite is Civilization V. The new series made sure to reference this by featuring lots of the World Wonders that you can build in the game. I counted Petra, the Terracotta Army, Angkor Wat, the Parthenon, Haigha Sophia, Taj Mahal, Pyramids, Louvre and Eiffel Tower, all of which would get you a very good score!

The entire series is currently available to watch on the BBC iPlayer here.