TV Worth Watching is a new series highlighting my favorite television viewing. I am a big fan of UK television, so you are sure to see many UK shows and movies featured here. — Douglas
The Art of Gothic: Britain’s Midnight Hour from BBC4
Another excellent series from the BBC. I love these “deep dives” into particular areas of history, literature and art. While I am basically familiar with most of the works mentioned in the series, it is seeing them laid out in a clear timeline and analyzed for the very specific aspects they brought to world culture and how they effected culture everywhere. Graham-Dixon delves into all aspects of Gothic including architecture, literature, the politics and culture of the era — which included the amazing changes being wrought by the Industrial Revolution in Britain. These types of documentaries are some of my most favorite viewing from the BBC (along with Doctor Who, of course) and I am constantly seeking out new series almost regardless of the topics then cover. I would certainly add this series to My Own Personal Master’s Degree notes and playlist.
Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how a group of 19th-century architects and artists spurned the modern age and turned to Britain’s medieval past to create iconic works and buildings.
In the middle of the 18th century – in England – an entirely surprising thing happened. Out of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason a monster was born – a Gothic obsession with monsters, ghouls, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. From restrained aristocratic beginnings to pornographic excesses, the Gothic revival came to influence popular art, architecture and literature.
- BBC Web Site
- Review of At the Art of Gothic
- Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination Exhibit at The British Library
- Murdoch Mysteries (Canada)
- Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (Australia)
- A Very British Renaissance
- Death in Paradise
- Pilgrimage with Simon Reeve
- All Creatures Great and Small
- BBC Who were the Greeks? (3 episodes)
- Poirot
- Shock and Awe – The Story of Electricity
- Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England
- Mechanical Marvels Clockwork Dreams
- Springwatch 2013
- Torchwood
- Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course
- Hamlet starring David Tennant
- Zen
- I, Claudius
- Foyle’s War
- Wreck-It Ralph
- The Story of Science from BBC (6 parts)
- Inspector Montalbano (Il Commissario Montalbano) – Italy