Tony Robinson - A Little Man with a Plan

From roguish winner Patrick Mower to an impish loser who nonetheless had the last laugh and became a knight of the realm: arise, Sir Tony Robinson! Here in 2020 he must be one of the most prolific presenters of TV history or travel around. Barely a week goes by without my spotting in the listings a programme in which he walks, flies, floats, takes to the tracks or time machine for Channels 4 or 5. I feel guilty at not watching more of them.

Trouble is, the genre has become so congested that series tend to blend into each other. What looks to be a repeat or re-hash may actually be a genuinely novel look at a familiar subject – or vice-versa. Surely while filming on location Tony must bump into other household names doing a similar thing. On a train threading the Andes, say ‘Hi’ to Michael Portillo; trudging across a World War 1 battlefield, bid a cheery wave to Dan Snow or Ian Hislop; delve into the Romans and expect to grapple for the best angles with Bettany Hughes or Michael Wood; dip into the costume box for a Tudor smock and sandals only to look up to find Lucy Worsley lording it in velvet, lace and tiara. And so on.

It wasn’t always thus. It’s easy to forget Tony Robinson is an actor by profession. I’m too old to have seen him on Play Away and minor film roles also passed me by. Then in the Eighties came two series in which his characters inhabited the past, or at least a comically warped version of it, and the rest is – er – history.

In 1983 I recall being distinctly underwhelmed by The Black Adder. Fresh from Not The Nine o’Clock News success, Rowan Atkinson co-wrote this 1485-set sitcom with Richard Curtis with himself in the title role, Peter Cook as Richard III and the little-known Tony Robinson as his servant Baldrick. All the ingredients promised much hilarity but delivered few laughs. Like many others, I gave up after one or two episodes. Thank goodness Ben Elton came on board for Blackadder II which aired in ’86. The lead character became more arrogant and less stupid, while Baldrick’s IQ took a nosedive.

With a supporting cast of Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Rik Mayall, Tim McInnerny et al, the series went from strength to strength. My personal favourite is Blackadder the Third but of course the concluding Blackadder Goes Forth featured the jaw-dropping ‘over-the-top’ slo-mo scene fading to a field of poppies, reminding us that for all the brilliant humour the brutal reality of the trenches was that millions were slaughtered. All the while, the exchanges between Edmund and Baldrick served up piles of comedy gold, the highlights being the latter’s ‘cunning plans’, forever doomed to fail.

Also at the tail end of the Eighties Robinson was moved to write his own historical comedy series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, cleverly subverting the over-familiar Robin Hood legend. Ostensibly a children’s show I didn’t dream of watching it. In any case I was probably still at work when it was broadcast. However, it gained in popularity and I was eventually tempted to tune in and see what all the fuss was about. I became hooked, the video henceforth set to record whenever I remembered. Like The Simpsons, Maid Marian was one of those shows wasted on kids! Just for a change, Robinson swapped peasant attire for the Sheriff’s garb but he was as daft as the rest of them, inevitably outwitted by Kate Lonergan’s Marian. I came to the series far too late; I feel a boxset-style YouTube binge approaching pronto.

Since then, Tony Robinson has become closely associated with history documentaries or features. However, the Baldrick connection and left-leaning politics have combined to focus not on kings and generals but the ordinary souls affected by the Establishment through the years. For example I occasionally caught an episode of Worst Jobs in History.  His latest is The History of Britain, again from the perspective of Mr and Mrs Ordinary. In my opinion, one of the most fascinating historical docs of recent times was his Great Rising of 1381. Shown in 2004, it was a full-blown re-telling of the Peasants Revolt, complete with familiar Brentwood locations. Robinson was a compelling and enthusiastic presenter par excellence, revelling in the story of the little man rising up against an oppressive regime. Of course, Wat Tyler’s cunning plan failed – but it was a close run thing.

For almost twenty years Tony’s historical era of focus varied from week to week. With his hosting skills the nation fell in love with a subject notoriously difficult to get across on telly: archaeology. Until 1994, my appetite for the subject was rarely satisfied. Every now and again there would be an edition of BBC2’s Chronicle or Timewatch featuring a dig but Channel 4’s Time Team refreshed the subject for the next generation – and me. When I used to visit Mum and Dad on Sunday afternoons, the programme became a regular part of our teatimes and I would often tune in at home in subsequent years, albeit with decreasing frequency.

It’s interesting to revisit Time Team now and track the length of his hair! In the early days it gave him the appropriate air of a greasy hippy  but, as this 1997 Time Team Live from Gloucestershire shows, the lank locks were tamed. Come the 2000s, what hair remained was going grey. Well, it happens to us all…

But Time Team wasn’t just about Tony Robinson. The three-day time limit was necessarily contrived but I learned a hell of a lot not only about British history but the specialist elements of archaeology itself, from basic trowel work but also the importance of geophysics scans, aerial photography and computer graphics. Aided by Mick Aston’s colourful jumpers, Phil Harding’s wonderfully rustic Wiltshire accent and the welcome feminine touch of Carenza Lewis, each week we would be guided through a frantic dig in the hope of finding answers to questions about the sites of, say, an Iron Age bridge, Roman settlement or Elizabethan manor house. While the professionals did their stuff, Robinson was effectively the viewer’s eyes and ears, scampering through mud from trench to trench with puppy-like enthusiasm to inspect the latest discovery of a coin, piece of masonry or, if their luck was really in, a section of mosaic.

It was science as entertainment, with a healthy dollop of open countryside as a bonus, even if the weather was often dreadful. Actually, some of the locations were more urban examining, for instance, medieval streets in York or Much Wenlock. I nursed a cruel preference for the weeks when the team was allowed to excavate pristine lawns of a stately home, imagining the expressions of the owners upon observing the carnage on returning from their brief sojourn in Chamonix or Antigua.

To an academic, every site was a potential goldmine of information but to viewers like me, the law of diminishing returns set in. One line of stones or fragment of urn looks very much like another and, despite the passion and zeal of the Time Team, I found it harder to maintain the desire to make that appointment to view on Sunday evenings. Nevertheless Tony Robinson had made his lasting mark yet again.

He also appeals to me as a fellow socialist and campaigner for causes close to my own heart like Make Poverty History or the doomed bid to prevent Brexit. I also revel in the knowledge that Baldrick was knighted while the right-wing Blackadder himself (well, Rowan Atkinson) remains at the time of writing, a mere CBE. The outdated honours system may be an irritating anachronism but it’s somehow reassuring that the little man, be it in lower or upper case, can once in a while get the upper hand.

Michael Wood - Crumpet in jeans?

As the son of a history teacher I suppose it was inevitable that I would develop a keen interest in discovering and understanding the past. It’s in the blood. School nurtured it further but the enthusiasm was fleshed out by frequent visits to assorted castles, stately homes and archaeological sites dotted around the South of England.

The Romans held a special space for me, a flame kindled by lessons at the age of seven or eight and truly ignited by a visit to the Eternal City itself in my teens. Living in Essex we were also fortunate to have close

encounters with relics from the Anglo-Saxon era, including St Cedd’s simple stone chapel at Bradwell, Greensted Church and the Battle of Maldon site, its crossed-swords symbol and date 991 leaping out from our local Ordnance Survey map.

In my younger days, my thirst for knowledge wasn’t easily quenched by television. With Mum and Dad I might watch the occasional Chronicle documentary while Blue Peter may have offered tasty features and later there was Johnny Ball’s light-hearted children’s series Cabbages and Kings. I associated TV history for grown-ups with stuffy old blokes with beards and pipes, presenters like Rene Cutforth and Fyfe Robertson. Then along came Michael Wood. The mould was broken.

Here was a bloke who, while nonetheless a bit on the posh side, appeared not a lot older than me. Tall and striking, he strode around bleak moors and marshes as if he belonged, clad in fur-lined anorak and tight jeans. The media dubbed him the ‘thinking woman’s crumpet’ (presumably to counter-balance Joan Bakewell’s claim on the thinking man) but to me he was a presenter who, in his In Search of…. series, really brought his subject to life before my very eyes.

I think I missed the first programmes, tucked away on BBC2 when I was a struggling student in my second term at Exeter. However, when the second series aired in March 1981 on BBC1 I was quickly hooked. My contemporary diary noted: “Few presenters…have managed to inject such enthusiasm and imagery into the events of the Dark Ages” and nobody I’ve seen since has altered that view.

The blue touchpaper was lit by Wood’s In Search of Athelstan. While his granddad Alfred the Great has a slightly higher profile thanks to the myth of his failed audition for Bake Off, I’d never heard of the tenth-century king. This stirring tale of war, politics, religion and legal reform changed all that. There was no budget for a cast of hundreds in full costume, warpaint and weaponry recreating bloody battles, scenes we take for granted in modern historical documentaries. There were not a lot of relics or pictures to use either; it’s not called the Dark Ages for nothing. However, with a few images of flickering flames, crashing waves and a soundtrack of occasional bloodcurdling cries, it’s Wood’s calm, composed yet dramatic narration which is so effective at telling the story.

I was probably back in the family home for the rest of the series, including Eric Bloodaxe, Ethelred and William the Conqueror. Obviously most of the information imparted has long since slipped the memory but not the impact of Michael Wood’s style of presentation. A few years later I ensured I viewed the BBC’s Great Little Railways series, which included an episode tracking the line from Athens to Olympia. Obviously it held dual appeal for a train and history enthusiast like me, but it lacked one vital ingredient. Wood’s lucid narration was present and correct but the man himself was never on screen. Plenty of moustachioed Greeks but no clean-shaven Manchester academics. It would have resonated more with me had I visited the Peleponnese myself, but I wouldn’t explore that corner of Greece for another fourteen years, not by rail but aboard a Cosmos coach.

Since those early Dark Ages documentaries, Michael Wood’s series - or at least the ones I watched – have been few and far between. His broadcast contribution to the BBC Domesday 900 project struck a resounding chord in 1986 (William the Conqueror again) then five years lapsed before I tuned into another landmark series, Legacy: The Origins of Civilisation. Instead of misty moors in Northumberland, Michael got to mingle with the natives and enthuse reverently about artefacts and ancient ruins in far-flung foreign lands like Iraq, India and China.

In ’98, he was off to the Middle East again In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, crossing deserts and threading mountain passes by various modes of transport, including a horse in Iran, but the next time his face appeared on my telly he was back in the Dark Ages filling the extensive gaps in my knowledge of Alfred the Great. His face was considerably more lined but the familiar presentation techniques and production values were as brilliant as ever.

Excellent history presenters with charisma and credibility are plentiful these days. From Simon Schama to Lucy Worsley, Bettany Hughes to Dan Snow and Jonathan Meades to Neil Oliver, I have enjoyed many televisual trips into the past in their company. However, for all the superior special effects at their disposal, in my opinion none quite match the story-telling of Michael Wood.