On your iPlayer

Two programmes are on the BBC’s iPlayer site for the next few days.

Extreme Pilgrim is interesting in looking at the physical experience and religious belief. It follows the trip of a CofE vicar who thinks that religion is too intellectual and so he’s off to the East in search of Enlightenment. In the first episode he’s off to the Shaolin temple in Henan to purchase enlightenment. I’ll be honest it only stopped on for the first fifteen minutes because I was looking forward to seeing the man suffer. He didn’t make a first impression. Anyone who goes to the Shaolin temple in search of easy enlightenment and then complains about tourists gawping every day deserves what he gets.

What does he get? Well this smoking guy thought that a month of training would be enough to keep up with people who work flat-out every day for years. By the end of the programme he’s more likeable. I don’t know if that’s a change in him or selective editing by the producer. Next week it’s the Himalayas.

Timewatch is one to put on in the background while you do something else, alas. Do you remember the Sea Stallion which sailed from Roskilde to Dublin last summer? The BBC has taken something which could be unbearably fascinating and rendered it into something much more bland.

As an example, the ship is the result of careful work and reconstruction on timbers excavated in Roskilde. For instance the timbers of the Sea Stallion are built from wood found in Ireland where the ships timbers came from. How did they know the timbers came from Ireland. Archaeologists found it out. Having got the heavy history out of the way the show is free to concentrate on the human drama of little kids waving the reenactors off, minor squabbles between crew and that sort of thing. It’s as if they wanted to make a history programme for people who have no interest in history which is itself a remarkable idea.

If you did the same with football then it would be 45 minutes of human drama in training and preparation, the highlights of the 1st half at half time and then plenty of close up shots of the backroom staff reacting to what they see on the pitch for the next half. If you’re lucky you might get a short voice-over at the end saying who won.

On Channel 4’s 4oD if you’re quick you can grab Bettany Hughes’s Athenians thing. I’d guess by now the latest Time Team is there too but I can’t be certain. I’m on a Mac. I do know however that they have series one of Chelmsford 123 available for download. Sadly it’s 99p an episode.