Documentaries

I see there's a Friday night movies thread and there are always great music threads on here, but what about documentary series?

Too boring?

Been watching the World At War again for the God knows how many times.

Still the best ever for me.

Are you guys into docu's?

 

Yep. I've got the World At War box sets.

I've also got Hitler: Reign of terror. Basically anything to do with ww2, I have it. All the films and documentaries.

I've recently just watched the Narcos series and I thought that was great.

 

Oh and Louis Theroux. Always thought he was a boring bastard but his documentaries are actually very good.

 

Is that the one where the music is really haunting.

 

It is mate. The narrative is by Sir Laurence Olivier.

 

Never used to miss that but that music used to go through me.

 

For all they haven't been shown for years the BBC2 Timewatch documentaries were fascinating and as accurate as these things can be. Most memorable was Agent ZigZag who was a double agent spreading disinformation to the Nazis in WW2.
Made especially good as he was from Burnopfield but lived for long periods in Sunderland.

 

The author Ben McIntyre wrote an excellent book on Agent ZigZag. He's also written one on Operation Mincemeat (the film The Man with No Name was based on this) which was made into a documentary recently. That was really good but not as good as the book. He's also written a really good one on the Double Cross system.

 

I love hearing stories like that. Those Timewatch documentaries were great. Talking about time, I used to like Time Team on Channel 4 as well. There was a great one about Hylton Castle. Watching all those kids in red and white watching the digs. Brought some memories back. Not of the 13th century, the 1970s lol.

 

Read the ZigZag one in one hit as it was so good.

 

Love anything to do with the following in roughly this order preferentially:

WW2 and specifically the labour camps.

Death Row or Prison

Murder Mysteries such as the Amanda Knox one or The Jinx or Making a murderer.

Sharks and Killer whales

Alligators and Crocs

Survival

Not exhaustive but they're my favourites.

Can't watch anything UFO related made in the US as they're basically all on crystal meth, it's just stupid.

 

The others are excellent too. The last one I read was 'The Napoleon of Crime' about a little-known but extremely successful and influential Victorian conman

 

I have become a history fan over the years through documentaries and the re-enactments stemming from some of the Time Team's programmes. The reconstruction of faces from skulls was brilliant.

 

Time Team did an excellent job of popularising archaeology but gave the public an extremely inaccurate impression of what the profession is like.

 

It probably did. But the younguns of today don't seem to have any appreciation of life before mobile phones, so anything that brings them sense of past and stimulates some interest has to be a good thing doesn't it?

 

There was a documentary about that last year. Some lass in Sheffield Uni was reconstructing faces from skulls. It was fascinating. I guess the older you get the more interesting these programmes are.

My kids are just not interested in historical documentaries and that really bothers me for some reason. If we can't teach our kids about the past how can we stop making the same old mistakes?

 

Oh yeah, it is a good thing. It would be nice if people understood a bit more about how it works in reality though...

 

I totally agree Norton. The younger generation don't seem to care though. I find their lack of knowledge about the 20 century in particular quite frightening.

 

History from books was just about as dull as it came in our day and Royal Houses was just a change of name. Have got a special interest in the Plantaganet's and Tudor's right now and las time I was in UK went to Bosworth battle site.

There was some double dealing bastards in those days - that Scouser Lord Stanley especially.

 

I could easy sit and chill in front of the TV with you.

That's probably exactly what I could have said, word for word.