10
Jan

RICHARD III ON THE ONE SHOW

   Posted by: Dorothea Preis   in Greyfriars Dig, News, Richard III in the Media

As announced yesterday, last night, or rather early this morning Australian time, The One Show on BBC 1 had a short item on the Greyfriars Dig.  Of course, as soon as possible I sneaked into the BBC iPlayer and watched the programme.  The format of The One Show is light early evening infotainment.  There was an item on car clampers in public car parks and another about an upcoming second series of a TV programme, but after about 20 minutes they came to the car park story I was interested in.

The item on Richard was presented by Dan Snow, who is referred to on the show’s website as “Our history man”.  Initially he had a short rather fat and bend-over man standing next to him, who was supposed to be Richard, so I started fearing the worst.  However, my fears were premature.  The programme itself was objectively presented, scoliosis was explained as a lateral curvature of the spine.  Dan first interviewed Richard Buckley, who explained where they found the remains.  He then had a chat with Michaeil Ibsen, Richard’s great great great …. nephew, at the Bosworth Battlefield Centre.  There were also some re-enactors fighting with each other, the one side proudly displaying their white boars, Richard’s emblem.

After the item the hosts of the show asked Dan of his opinion whether the remains were those of Richard.  Dan said that through his talks with the experts he had been convinced that it is indeed Richard.  He also mentioned that the Minister of Justice is supposed to announce next week, where Richard (if it is him) would be reburied.

Dan also said that Richard had had very bad PR and though “he may have had his nephews killed”, this was fairly insignificant compared to what other kings before and after him were up to.  He also stressed that Shakespeare painted Richard as dark as possible as he lived in Tudor times.

The whole segment finished with a short clip from Richard III with Laurence Olivier.

Though the programme did not offer any new insight to anyone who has been following the developments, it would have been a concise informative item for those who were not approaching it with any special interest.  However, The One Show is not aimed at medieval history buffs, so for its target audience it was not a bad programme.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 14:43 and is filed under Greyfriars Dig, News, Richard III in the Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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