There was her contribution to the Civilisations series, in which she toured the entire history of every world religion in 90 minutes flat and barely got out of the plane, she was jetting around the subject so fast. And her current Inside Culture series (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mz1w) had Brian Cox, Brian Blessed and an inflatable Stonehenge, and still managed to be an extended luvvie-fest which alluded to art's Big Serious Issues but still didn't manage to grab me by the ears. Still, maybe it's just me being unfair. What did others think?
By contrast, the recent Inside Museums series has been a delight. Just short-straight, 30-minute appreciations of (mostly) art galleries, with presenters who exuded warmth and passion, and - with one exception - had no obvious overriding agenda except to appreciate the art. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/ ... de-museums.
Fabulous stuff. Lachlan Goudie in the Scottish National Gallery (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... al-gallery) just might have presented the best gallery tour I've ever seen. And Emma Dabiri in Belfast https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... ter-museum was just perfect.
The exception? For me at least, it was the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition at the National Gallery, which got kind of drowned in its gender agenda. (18th century artist revenges herself on her teenage rapist by portraying herself over and over and over again, in every biblical scene that involves women cutting up men.) Pity about that, the art's absolutely fine in itself, and the cause is well worth fighting, but the agenda fairly sucks all the breath out of you.
Or me, at least Decide for yourself. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... entileschi). Nice to see some new approaches, anyway. Worth a look.
BJ