Terry Jones’ Barbarians

January 17, 2008

Rated: Unrated Runtime: 205 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’m such a history nut…at least when it comes to history about wars and pillage and stuff like that. I’m also a huge Monty Python fan so when I found out about Terry Jones’ Barbarians, a 4-part series about the little-known tribes of Europe that were always the bane of the Romans, I had to have it!

History and Comedy are two things you might normally consider hard to mix together, but the brits seemed to have discovered the secret: A dry subject like history should only be mixed with comedy that is also dry. Enter Python alum Terry Jones! Following in the footsteps of several of his Python brethren, he narrates (and editorializes) this nifty little series to great effect.

History, as it turns out, has always held a rather dim view of the “barbarian” hordes of Europe. Although Rome was always viewed as corrupt and rather vile at times, at least the Romans were always viewed as being … well … civilized. The wealth and technology available allowed the Romans to build the fabulous cities whose ruins still stand today. We know of their many remarkable achievements in art, medicine, architecture, politics and, yes, warfare. But what of their foes? Always portrayed as tribal, savage, and superstitious, historians on the whole gave them little regard. But now, thanks to some clever deductive reasoning as well as newly unearthed evidence of their cities and civilizations, we now know that long-held view of these Barbarians was simply a fabrication of the victors who vanquished them – the Romans.

The Celts, as it turns out, built the first intercontinental highway system! As well, they created a *very* precise astronomical calendar that is believed to be the first to ever of its kind. It was much more complex – and accurate – than anything the Romans ever devised. Many other very surprising accomplishments have been discovered about the Celts and they are covered here in this material. And the other three episodes include equally fascinating information about the Goths and other peoples.

And through it all speaks the inimitable Terry Jones. He does a great job here of explaining with dumbing down the material (much). And he infuses the whole series with some very nice commentary and dry humor, too. My only real complaints about the series are 1) it’s too short. I would like to have seen more than just 4 episodes…and 2) while they did a great job explaining the ‘what’, they spent very little time on the question of ‘why’. A bit more attention there would have been fantastic. But complaints aside, this is still 4 stars worth of material.

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Posted by Alex | Filed Under 4 Stars, DVD, Documentary, Terry Jones, Unrated