tjj wrote:
Howburn Digger on the other clearly did watch it and made some valid criticisms - Ben Fogle as a presenter is definitely not everyone's cuppa.
I really don't have a problem with Ben Fogle. He is as BBC predictable as a cup of tepid low-caffeine coffee with three sugars plus a handful of Marshmallows dropped in as well! Not the way I like my coffee...!
The use of drones and the really magnificent camera work used by these programme directors is quite breathtaking. Even with relatively small parts of their content devoted to Archaeology, these programmes are right up TMA's street and we are looking at landscapes very little or only lightly touched since the Bronze or early Iron Age. Aerial shots show up the modern roads, little new build houses, ruined cotts and patches of old rig and furrow but aside from that - it is as fresh as Creation and Mother Nature left it. I've been over there a few times now and the landscape's beauty actually hurts. I remember visiting the radar missile tracking station and loving the fact I could see St Kilda from the car park area on top of Clettraval beside the radar dome, a Sea Eagle flew overhead and I walked twenty yards down to a couple of massive chambered cairns. Back at the car park the guy (Mr Fergusson - two s's) driving the minibus around passed me a beautiful Neolithic Flint Axe he'd picked up of the ground a few weeks earlier.... he kept it in his minibus glove compartment...
My ill feeling about the programme were really to do with the sections where it appeared to be equating a sense of spirituality with the presence of Prince Charles. As if a Windsor's arrival at a croft bestowed some Godly wisdom on the place and its apparent Royal-Loving forelock-tugging yokels. This section of the programme harked directly at some kind of divine right of kingship. Charles Windsor as a God-appointed righteous ruler and font of nameless spirituality and green-wisdom. Aaaargh! Instead for me it breathed great volumes of rank condescending Windsor halitosis across the islands, the wilderness, the ancient history and those who currently live there. It really made me want to vomit and seemed to channel the worst of the empty spirituality, questionable 'mindfulness' and the worthless personal playdough of the roll-your-own ball of 'Me-ism' posing as "Spirituality" in the FB, Amazon, Air B'n'B new normal. I've got it all out now.
Just give me the archaeology, the long shots of the beautiful beaches and the strange counterpoint of Radar Missile Tracking overlooking St Kilda!
