CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: A trip down memory lane that’s Noughty but not so nice

The Noughties

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Henry VIII: Bloodlust & The Boleyns 

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You realise you’re knocking on a bit when people start waxing nostalgic about an era that feels to you not just recent, but futuristic.

To anyone old enough to remember the Moon landings, the 21st century still belongs to the likes of Buck Rogers. 

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, was meant to be conquering the galaxy during the Nineties, and Gerry Anderson’s live-action sci-fi serial was called Space: 1999. The past is all ahead of us.

It’s dismaying to realise that to millennials who were children or barely out of their teens at the turn of the century, the year 2000 really seems like ancient history.

Comedians Ellie Taylor and Geoff Norcott sat down with presenter Angela Scanlon to reminisce on The Noughties (BBC2) about the birth of reality TV with Big Brother and fireworks over the Thames as the decade began.

This seemed like a charming excuse for some pop culture. No such luck. Within a couple of minutes, it felt like being trapped at an awkward social gathering.

Partly, it was the studio set: a fake living room with a painted backdrop of French windows and fireplace, supposed to make the cramped space appear bigger. 

The comics perched uncomfortably at opposite ends of a sofa, the regulatory two metres apart, with cushions piled between them. 

They looked like divorcees who loathed each other. Angela sat on the other side of the room, clutching a sheaf of questions, like their therapist.

The trio played little games, as if this was the prelude to a terrible dinner party. Angela asked them to guess the top box office hits of the year. 

Little whiteboards were provided for them to write their answers: the production team had evidently thought about this, though not for long enough to realise what a deathly dull idea it was.

To stir some controversy, Angela aired a clip of Michael Parkinson interviewing Victoria Beckham just after she had left the Spice Girls. 

‘Are you anorexic?’ he demanded.

It wasn’t Parky’s finest moment, but Ellie and Geoff — who were horrified at the bluntness — completely missed the point.

Mrs Beckham’s fellow guest was Clarissa Dickson Wright, one half of the cookery duo Two Fat Ladies. 

This was a deliberate collision of opposites, fat and thin. ‘What do you eat? How many lettuce leaves?’ chortled Clarissa.

‘I don’t know who the lady was,’ mumbled Geoff, and neither Angela nor Ellie could help him.

What is the point of showing a compilation of vintage TV clips if the celebs commenting can’t even be bothered to find out what they’re meant to be looking at?

Historian Tracy Borman knew exactly what she was looking at when she visited the Vatican archive in Henry VIII: Bloodlust & The Boleyns (C5). 

Undistracted by the spectacular, painted arches of the library, she turned the pages of a volume containing the king’s handwritten billets-doux to his mistress, Anne Boleyn.

‘Wishing myself especially of an evening in my sweetheart’s arms,’ sighed Hal — he had drawn a heart around her initials, like a soppy schoolboy.

The series promises to uncover fresh secrets about the Tudor monarch, but that glimpse of a royal love letter (addressed to ‘Anne de Boulen’) was a rare moment of originality. This era of history is not so much well-trodden as trampled.

A succession of talking heads told the story, with brief reconstructions — but not like the expansive scenes served up by Neil Oliver earlier this week in his Blood Of The Clans.

For anyone who enjoys clear historical accounts, it was an interesting hour but hardly exceptional.