Best and Worst TV Historians?

kazeuma said:

What about Terry Jones?

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He did actually get a History degree at Oxford and wrote both humorous and series works on history before he found fame with Monty Python, although his serious works did not find traction until he was famous. One of his first screenwriting and performing jobs for the BBC was "The Complete and Utter History of Britain", fondly remembered by us old folk.

Dan Snow, although a well connected toff with a father and uncle as well known TV journalists and a father-in-law who happens to be the Duke of Westminster--got an MA in History from Oxford and has been giving lectures and TV presentations since his undergraduate days.

I do, though get annoyed when Andrew Marr--the most pretentious and self-opinionated pratt in the United Kingdom gets to present historical shows.

Ancientgeezer said:

He did actually get a History degree at Oxford and wrote both humorous and series works on history before he found fame with Monty Python, although his serious works did not find traction until he was famous. One of his first screenwriting and performing jobs for the BBC was "The Complete and Utter History of Britain", fondly remembered by us old folk.

Dan Snow, although a well connected toff with a father and uncle as well known TV journalists and a father-in-law who happens to be the Duke of Westminster--got an MA in History from Oxford and has been giving lectures and TV presentations since his undergraduate days.

I do, though get annoyed when Andrew Marr--the most pretentious and self-opinionated pratt in the United Kingdom gets to present historical shows.

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I do think Dan Snow is relatively good, but I have to admit my likeness of him does, to some extent, link to his views on history. He is unsurprisingly kosher. There is no damn revisionism with our Dan(that is a compliment btw). However, I do remember his earliest foray's into tv with his father and thinking this really is BBC nepotism to an alarming degree. Ultimately though I think it's a Dimbleby form of nepotism - an undoubtedly talented family along with some excellent family connections.

Scaeva said:

As far as celebrities go, I like Peter Weller as a presenter.

Besides being charismatic, he has the credentials and isn't just some actor with no interest in the subject matter. He has a masters degree in Roman & Renaissance art and taught ancient history at university.

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Blew my mind when I realized I was learning about Byzantium from Robocop.

Sometimes I think he tries a little too hard to make history sound cool, but overall a good presenter.

-Dave K

Wow-
Nobody mentioned perhaps the most influential of them all.

James Burke.

His original Connections series- aired in 1978 on PBS and was the most viewed Documentary series in PBS history before being outdone by Ken Burns Civil War.


But more tellingly, This series- and his followup, The Day The Universe Changed, presented a far more analytical view of history and how change occurs, with correlations to current events and how they might impact the future.
James Burke! - A Video PlayList on Dailymotion

in 1980, James Burke accurately predicted the development, the scope, and the social impact of the internet... nine years before the invention of the World Wide Web, ten years before the first web server went online.

Presaging, even, the recent political upheaval that can be traced to the fact that every person can have a networked computer at the tip of his finger.

His uncanny ability to infer the future is predicated in his own thesis on how history unfolded, and why. On the kind of non-linear consequences that are the result of innovation and altered understandings.

While his later rehashes of Connections ( versions 2, and 3 ) are not as compelling...
His first two series are probably the most informative and mind opening 20 hours of television I have ever seen.