No. 3425:

Civilisation

Audio

Today, Civilisation. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

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So many wonderful television series teach us history today. Ken Burns might be the first name that springs to mind. (I drop everything whenever he comes out with a new series.) But there are so many more. Of course some get pretty labored – filling the air with tedious repetition and images. Or grinding favorite axes. But so many offer splendidly concise and accurate history lessons.

So let us recognize one such series in particular – the one that showed us just how well it could be done. It was Sir Kenneth Clark’s thirteen-part 1969 series titled Civilisation – spelled with an s instead of a z. Clark being a noted British art historian. And – this is significant – he subtitled his series as “A Personal View”.

Kenneth Clark

He had to say that: After all, Civilization is a subject far too vast to cover in thirteen, one-hour-long programs. (Or even in thirteen fat books for that matter.) Clark showed how well art and architecture reflected the way civilization has fitfully advanced. That was limited, of course. But, oh, how brilliantly he constructed his case!

Some were critical of his selection of the cultures whose art he displayed. Mostly the western world, since his series, after all, had to be limited. But close on its heels came a second series that not only filled in some blanks. It also added new dimensions to Civilization’s story. It was Jacob Bronowski’s series, The Ascent of Man.

Jacob Bronowski

Bronowski played fitting counterpoint to Clark. He was a noted mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. And his series plumbed human civilization more through its science and invention. And he touched many different cultures. Still, it had an eerie similarity to Clark’s Civilisation in its depth, clarity, and its riveting hold on our attention.

Those two series stand today as breakthrough works. An interesting sidelight is that the person who commissioned each was David Attenborough. And Attenborough’s many expert television series have since given us comparable insight into so many facets of nature.

David Attenborough

Of course it’s dangerous to call out any television series and place it on a pedestal. We all have favorites among those that followed Clark and Bronowski. I concede that I might be biased since each so touched me. But I can safely say that I had seen nothing remotely like them when they first appeared.

We’ve since seen many other series that’ve taken to heart the things those people did right. These videos are like so many technological inventions. They go along until someone makes a breakthrough improvement. Say, for example, how the DC3 airplane abruptly changed the quality of civilian air travel.

And here two great visual essayists abruptly changed the whole practice of TV history telling.

I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

Kenneth Clark - Wikipedia

Civilisation (TV series) - Wikipedia

Here are the 13 episodes of Civilisation. You might find links to many of these individual episodes on line.

1 The Skin of Our Teeth

2 The Great Thaw

3 Romance and Reality

4 Man: the Measure of all Things

5 The Hero as Artist

6 Protest and Communication