Documentaries

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00264cj/episodes/player BBC Four, 2 epidosdes. 180 min. Programme: Leonardo da Vinci Format: 2-part documentary series Year: 2024 Date watched: March 2026 Status: Completed Overall reaction This was a revelatory series for me. Before watching it, I had a strong but somewhat abstract sense of Leonardo: the Mona Lisa, the London exhibition with the two Virgin of the Rocks paintings face to face, the mythology around “Da Vinci,” and the broad idea of a genius who lived 500 years ago. But this series gave me a much clearer chronological understanding of his life: who his mother was, who his father was, why he returned to Florence, why he went to Rome, how he moved between patrons, and how all of this shaped him. The 2011 National Gallery exhibition you remembered really did bring the London and Louvre versions of The Virgin of the Rocks together for the first time.  What affected me most is that I came to identify with Leonardo. Not in the simplistic...

Monty Don's British Gardens (2025) Seen on March 2026, 5 episodes (1 hr. each) Programme: Monty Don’s British Gardens Broadcaster: BBC Format: 5-part documentary series Year: 2025 Date watched: March 2026 Status: Completed Overall reaction This series turned out to be much more than a tour of beautiful gardens. For me, it became a way of clarifying what I actually value in gardens: collaboration, love of plants for their own sake, layered planting, eccentricity, personal expression, and the idea that a garden can be both designed and emotionally alive. Across the five episodes, I moved away from admiring formal design for its own sake and toward wanting a garden with formal structure but naturalistic, looser, more rewilded feeling. The series itself ran in five episodes from Scotland/Northumberland to the South West, with Monty visiting around 60 gardens across Britain.  Episode 1 — Scotland to Northumberland What stayed with me most in the first episode was the idea of gar...

Civilisations: Rise and Fall (2025) Seen on the 8th March 2026, 4 episodes 1) Your reaction, kept in your own spirit Today you watched Civilisations: Rise and Fall, a four-episode BBC documentary series that you found very engaging and enjoyable. You were especially drawn to how it presents the collapse of major civilizations in a vivid and accessible way. In the Rome episode, you found the fall of Rome fascinating. You learned more about who held power, the role of the senators, and the position of Honorius, who became emperor in 395 AD. You were struck by the threat posed by Alaric and the Goths, and by the move of the imperial court to Ravenna. You found all of that very interesting and it gave you a clearer sense of how power and decline operated in late Rome. The series itself presents Rome’s crisis around the sack of 410 AD.  In the Egypt episode, you were intrigued by Cleopatra and the fall of Alexandria. You learned that Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar, Caesario...