THE CELTS: BLOOD, IRON AND SACRIFICE BBC 2, 9pm

HISTORIAN Neil Oliver provoked angry debate in The Herald last week with his views on Nationalist demands for a second referendum. These deliberately provocative comments could mean only one thing: he has a new TV show and would like some attention.

He co-presents this series with anatomist Alice Roberts and they swap the presenting and narration between them in telling the story of the Celtic people who, according to Oliver, we popularly think of as inhabiting “a shadowy, wilder, more primal time”

but who actually had “a common culture which stretched from Turkey to Portugal”.

In this first episode of three, we travel to Rome, the Alps and Champagne to learn of the Celts’ origins, some of their more spectacular battles, and how they fought with the Roman Empire for supremacy in Europe. We are reminded that they were more than just a picturesque, primitive people restricted to Scotland and Ireland.

As with most history series today, there is lots of needless dramatisation, and plenty of sweating men charging across hillsides with flaming torches.

Professor Roberts’s segments are intellectually rigorous, while Oliver’s are more concerned with drama and moody shots of him on Roman streets or windswept plains.