I normally enjoy Mary Beard a lot, and I can just about put up with Simon Schama, whose intellect I admire, even if I don't much care for his camera manner. (He can look as though someone's put ants into his Y-Fronts during a gurning competition.) But I'm not especially surprised to read in the Times that the viewing figures have already halved. Mrs Beard on religion last night was sending me to sleep.
I think I've figured out what's unsettling me. The Beeb seems to have rediscovered the lost art of delivering an old-style Reithian lecture, not a "conventional" TV documentary. And I'm a bit out of practice at handling so much information coming at me all at once. Yes, the images are fine (even if the constant jangling electronic mood-music isn't), but the sheer density of information coming at me is a bit overwhelming.
TBH it was always going to be a bit ambitious skipping from Buddha to Christianity, then across to Islam and then back again to the Parthenon in time for tea. A whistle-stop lecture tour that left me wishing I'd got some course notes to refer to, or I'll fail one of my curriculum modules.
So yes, the fault's all mine, I suppose, because my brain's gone soft since my university days and I prefer my evening culture forays a bit more entertaining and a bit less hectoring. How are others getting on with it?
BJ