Change Your Image
PeachesThePuca
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Ancient Top 10 (2016)
Ancient History For The Reality TV Lover
I hope you like LOUD HYPED MALE NARRATOR with EPIC ROCK MUSIC. Sensationalism for sensationalism's sake. This screams of something made to grab a Pawn Stars viewer instead of someone eager to learn history. Mostly treads the same few civilizations as most other budget docuseries, but gives Africa some love which is nice to see. The most frustrating aspect is when they run out of factual information but need to give a solid 'conclusion' for the audience and make stuff up instead of saying 'we don't know yet'.
It's a good docuseries to show people who have short attention spans, but like fictional historical shows since it focuses more on entertainment than neutral presentation.
Black Coffee (2007)
Fantastic View of the History of Coffee
Excellent documentary following the history of coffee and how it impacted history. It is a fantastic work, as it pulls in many different documentary viewers, those that like history, those that enjoy social commentary, and those that like commerce.
It even delves into some myths around coffee and the coffee vs tea debate!
I want to point out, that their is a segment dedicated to Starbucks and Fair Trade that shows it's age. 2007 was quite a different time and what was progressive and innovative then, like Fair Trade and Starbucks, is not as much the case now. However, it is only a small portion of the documentary and they do a good job covering it!
Ancient Impossible (2014)
A Good Beginner Docuseries For Children
This is a good docuseries to show children if they show interest in ancient history.
It has:
-Unnecessary Explosions
-Cool Rock Music
-Overly Excitable Random Non-Experts
-Measurements in Football Fields
-Guns Shooting Things!
-United States Military
-Explanation of basic concepts
-Bombastic comparisons
-Contradictory Statements
-Catchphrases!
-Rome and Egypt with a cameo for other civilizations every so often
-Out of place modern cultural and technological references
-Experiments that don't test what Ancient tech was actually used for
-Episodes are 70% content, 30% same content, but repeated again
-Some conclusions are not made by Historians or Experts, but by a guy with a really cool 3D projecting glove.
For people who enjoy documentaries, this is incredibly underwhelming and is more of a tv show with personalities than informative. Often retreading old grounds, each episode has at least one new thing you will learn, so it is not a complete wash. (One episode was actually fantastic!) However, actual historians and experts are not shown enough and the uncharismatic '3D Analyst' with the glove is the most frustrating recurring segment I have ever watched in my entire life. Very heavily Egypt and Rome centric, even when other civilizations and their cultures fit the theme of the various episodes. The first episode is absolutely dreadful, but the subsequent ones become more bearable as the season goes on.
This is a docuseries best suited to grab and hold the attention of children or played in the background while you multitask.