Historical documentaries these days rely too much on dramatisations which create the impression that everyone from the past was either a seductive queen, a barbaric warrior or a muddy peasant with a fondness for torchlight. Thankfully, this new two-part series swerves away from such costumed frippery, offering straight narration from presenter Dr Clare Jackson, though we do get some footage of crowns, broken and twisted, and windswept beaches, and Dr Jackson does often veer into narrating this like a swashbuckling story: “Ashore stumbled a sick, bedraggled man. Behind him servants hauled a chest of gold. The gold was to finance a rebellion and the man was a king back to claim his kingdom!”
TV does assume we have no imagination where history is concerned and will be bored without these dramatic bells and whistles. The programme even has the title Game of Crowns, again trying much too hard to shove this into drama and intrigue.
This series marks the 300th anniversary of the Stuarts in exile, starting in 1715 with The Old Pretender, James Francis Stuart, son of the deposed King James, launching his rebellion to take the crown from the Hanoverian King George I, and we look at the threat the Jacobites posed to the security of the British state.
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