"I hate historical documentaries" Topic

And that includes Ken Burns' interminable Civil War epic.

They have "actors" in them, who do not act. They pose.

95% of the "facts" you already know. The rest you VIOLENTLY disagree with.

One on Alesia yesterday noted that the gladius was a "stabbing sword" and whenever it was shown in use, it was by single soldiers out of formation swinging it wildly like they were trying to behead an elephant.

Annoying voice-overs while "actors" pose and look grim.

Sepia tint photos of an earnest young man in a uniform slightly too big for him.
Voice over:
"And then the Rebs shot and killed me, Ma!"
---Private Gunther Toody, 33rd Brooklyn Zouaves, April 17th, 1863

Whenever someone gripes here about how historically inaccurate a movie is, someone always says "Hey! It's Hollywood! It's not a documentary!"
I daresay you could sit down with a legal pad and catalog just as many howlers from a documentary as from a movie or miniseries. Being a documentary is no guarantee of accuracy. Or watchability for that matter.

The best of the lot on the History/Military/Military History Channel documentaries are the "Hey! Look at the color film we found!" and any with actors posing are rubbish.

There. Glad I got this off my chest, and too bad I can't crosspost to Ranting.

I would say the average viewer know about 5% of what is discussed. Most of them probably can't even name the major combatant nations.

Most of what you say you hate was not part of "The Civil War". No actors, no re-enactments. Just a LOT of photos from the time and a lot of talking heads.

Now then, those more modern ones are something else. Worst of the lot are those X vs Y shows where that Gladius bit sounds like it comes from. One of those was a Ninja (in the black outfit) vs a Norman Knight if I remember correctly. Another one was a gangster vs some other equally insane opponent. I could feel my IQ dropping just watching the ads.

I agree with the OFM. At least I do in the main. The Civil War by Ken Burns aside. Most of the more recent documentaries are not for those who actually know about the subject covered. They are slightly informative entertainment. And I'm being generous in using such a description. The best I can say about them is that they may inspire some to do some research into the subject. Otherwise they have a lot in common with what's under the outhouse.

I agree with John. I consider myself spoiled by the documentaries of my youth, "World at War" and "Victory at Sea." I find most modern "documentaries" to pale in comparison. I find that I do not watch the various history channels any longer. There is nothing to see there, for the most part.

Where I disagree with The OFM (never a comfortable position to be in) is with regard to the Ken Burns productions. I do find some of them both informative and entertaining.

I hate most war movies for similar reasons…

I love Ken Burns documentaries you old whinge bag OFM :) But in all honesty I know so little about the war that any inaccuracies would have been over my head so I didn't have anything like that to deal with.

As regards to more recent/modern History Channel type documentaries I don't think your level of whining is at all adequate…they disgust me to be honest

I do not agree. I really liked the BBC Colosseum documentary, though some parts were fantasy, and I loved Shiloh Fiery Road.

Quick tip, don't watch them then.

There has been a shift in the last couple of decades in how documentaries are presented and marketed. The shift has been to an "edutainment" format, and the documentaries produced over that time has shifted to cater to that market. I think this developed because of the popularity (relatively speaking) of channels like TLC, History, Military Channel, etc. Essentially IMHO the historical documentary format has been "popularized" and designed to appeal to the very casual viewer.

Damon.

While visiting my in-laws around Christmas, we caught some documentary episodes on the "American Heroes Channel [or Network] about the American Revolution. The shows featured reenactors, "expert" commentary, and flashy special effects. I didn't like it.

The episodes got some stuff right, but also had their share of mistakes. One really irritating error was a brief image of an actor portraying Johann Rall lying "dead" on the floor of his Trenton office. (It didn't help that the actor might have had a slight smile on his face.) The fact that the historical Rall was mortally wounded leading his men and didn't get gunned down in his office meant nothing to the producers of this show.

Along with the factual errors and other problems, the show used a lot of the same footage over and over again. My wife offered perhaps the most astute comment of all: the show was designed to be turned on as background noise and was not meant to be watched or listened to closely. I think she was right.

There are lots of things that bother me in documentaries, especially the mass-produced ones that are being cranked out fast and cheap.

1) The carrot and stick approach. These documentaries are often about some mysterious discovery and they spend the first part of the show building up to the amazing conclusion, then start all over again after the break for those who joined halfway, get to another break and start once again and then toss out the info in the last minute or so, roll credits.

2) Those shows where you have all the "action" reconstructed by cheap actors in costume, which is supposed to make it authentic and exciting, but it never is.

3) Tie-ins with movies and topics that happen to be in the media. Usually presented as "The real story behind …"

4) Most of their sources tend to be the Amazon top ten mixed in with long-debunked factoids.

5) Equal time to any random weirdo with a pet theory as if Joe's belief in extraterrestrial angels from Mars is just as valid or more so than the leader of NASA's Mars rover program.

6) Hitler's this or that. Hitler does this, Hitler does that, Hitler is like God, omnipresent and personally involved in every single event in WWII.

I was watching a documentary about Arracourt, they had the old stock footage montage including 1940's Stukas, Germans on the Russian Front, burning T34's in 1944 France etc. Luckily they avoided showing Zeros and Japanese. Then the old infographic about the Sherman being a crap tank with a bad gun and paper-thin armour. Emphasized by a carefully edited sound-byte by a historian. They then show the infographic about Hitler's super-tank, the Panther, an invincible Uber-weapon. Narration that the US had to use five Shermans to defeat a single Panther.

Also they show the early model Sherman, poorly modelled during a coffee break and the almost perfectly formed Panther, lavishly worked over by ravenous fanboys.

On the one hand they go out of their way to portray the Germans as near perfect, the US as somehow criminally under-equipped yet Patton is chasing them through France. How this is achieved is handled in a single sentence.

Next they show Hitler's mighty Panthers being strafed, because airpower. Apparently machinegun trails will instantly disintegrate a Panther.

We then spend 30 minutes watching Hitler's unstoppable Panthers knocking out lots of Shermans and TD's and somehow the Germans end up being defeated, but Patton's victory against Hitler comes "At a heavy price" Even though the German offensive completely failed and they suffered far greater losses than the Americans.

Compared to that dreck, Ken Burns is a beacon of quality.

Patrick R, I couldn't agree more about 6).
Bravo.

My middle daughter and her husband have been watching this "Sons of Liberty" series. You can't imagine how tiring it is explaining how wrong the "history" is that they are seeing.

nnascati – It is actually pretty easy with that show – simply turn it off. I stopped watching halfway through the second episode and I'm surprised I got that far. You guys want to see absolute drek? Sons of Liberty delivers.

No one will probably read this so far down the list, but I have seen some notable exceptions from The History Channel. Some of their Vietnam stuff is great. You get interviews with significant participant.

I have a DVD they did on Hue and one on the Easter Offensive. You get Ripley, Turley, Christmas, etc.
Fabulous. Also, in general, the film went with the subject of the narration, not something totally different.

They did another with some of the participants from COL Bull Simon's raid at Son Tay, and another with a SOG team in Laos (or Cambodia – I am not sure now which it was).

They also did a magnificent one on Air America.

To see and hear those heroes talking about what they did is fantastic.

Tom

Tom

I understand your point about some of the more current documentaries being pretty much laughable, but Ken Burns Civil War heaped in with that? That I must disagree with. Imho I happen to think it's an excellent piece of documentary work and very original in it's conception when first released. Since then many have tried to emulate his style of documentary film making as it's quite effective.

There are good ones out there albeit most are older:

Battlefield series
War in Flames
Ken Burns various films
Vietnam 10,000 day War
Vietnam
The Great War

That's off the top of my head, but there are others. Fortunately there are good ones to watch if you filter out the corny ones that most here are talking about.

Christopher

I like all documentaries, I take from them what is interesting and disregard the rest. Anything which promotes the study of history even if flawed is better then soaps, reality TV and the other dross they put out.
I also like the Panther tank and the Sherman tank, but if I had to go one on one I'd choose the Panther.

I suppose you don't like 'Ancient Aliens' either…

History for the masses. Just like McDonalds.

> I suppose you don't like 'Ancient Aliens' either…

Not the same show I think but there was one hosted by the guy that played BJ Hunicut from MASH. Poor guy must have been desperate for cash. Pretty darn funny!

Host – Why does the alien have large black eyes?
"expert" – they come from a planet with a very bright sun.

Host – Why is the Alien tall and Thin?
"expert" – they come from a planet with very high gravity.

Host – What else can you tell us about them?
"expert" – They love Strawberry Ice Cream.

I was crying by that part…

"I was crying by that part…"

Hey man don't be too upset; it may not be true

Mind you I can't think of any better reason to invade this planet than to steal our ice cream

So what you're actually saying is that you don't like documentaries that agree with all your opinions, because you "already knew that".
And you don't like documentaries that disagree with your existing opinions,because they disagree with you.

So basically you're just whining for the sake of whining. That seems…unproductive.

Has reading comprehension sunk so low?????

Love Documentaries. Just like anything there are good ones and bad ones. So I guess I am trying to figure out why this is even a Topic?

When they are good, they can be very good indeed, but there so much dross, particularly Hitler porn and war porn in general.

You just have to be selective.

A lot of this is kind of like "I hate books because the trashy romance novels I buy at Rite Aid have lots of plot holes." Every form of media out there has mass marketed trash as well as carefully constructed masterpieces.

Most war "documentaries" are the trashy romance novels of the documentary world (speaking as someone who works in the industry). They're like bodice-rippers for men.

What I would prefer is if documentations use actual footage when they can.I was watching a WW2 documentary about Normandy and it was all half-assed CGI tanks and troops instead of the hundreds of hours of outstanding battle footage that was filmed as it happened. Makes no sense.

And if you are going to use CGI then rather than reinvent the rudimentary cgi from scratch use something like Combat Mission Beyond Normandy, Arma 3, or Il2 STurmovik to recreate specific events.

Los

I agree with John. Ken Burns CW shows pictures of people that aren't what they are supposed to be. He shows an 1861 photo of NY state militia. They are said to be Confederates. This is just one example.

I agree with John. It is frustrating.

I like Ken Burns. Sure there are some mistakes but it is head and shoulders above anything the History Channel ever did.

Jason Robards as Grant's voice was an inspired choice.

I'm currently watching a thing on Netflix called 14 Dairies of the Great War that's a mix of acting and documentary, not bad. But don't watch it, John.

I had to chuckle at your comment, Patrick R. It took me back a couple of years to when I was writing and performing comedy mock interviews on a local community radio station.

One was a promotional piece for former astronaut and NASA consultant Flip Overberger, shamelessly exploiting the opportunity to publicise his latest opus 'Mayans and Alien Angels on Mars: the Truth'. There were legal complications ensuing from a conflict with the author of rival tome 'Mayans and Alien Angels on Mars: the Facts'.

Actually Flip moved in both worlds: on a previous visit he used his airtime to promote the commercial family runabout version of the Mars Rover.

The worst part of all of them is that the commercial segments are 5 minutes long, and sandwiched between them is 5 minutes of content. One third of that content is spent in recounting EVERYTHING that went before in the program and the last third is spent teasing what you are going to see in the NEXT segment. This means you get abut 1.8 minute of story advancement.

Now you can pile on top all the rest of your complaints.

I don't even bother watching them any more. Sasha Alexander and Angie Harmon are much better eye-candy than fat re-enactors.