18/01/2013 The Review Show

This programme contains strong language.

On the review show tonight, Tarantino's back, with all guns

blazing. Yes! Is Django Unchained's

reinvention of the western too bloody to stomach. Prime Minister

Prime Minister returns to our screens after 25 years.

What kind of leak? About joining the euro. But is sir Humphrey

really a match for Malcolm Tucker. The Vikings return to Scotland,

this time bringing treasure to Edinburgh.

And teenage angst about obesity in California with Navel Gazing, and

Lincolnshire with Fatou. I've got the biggest screw up in the history

of screw ups for a parent. Joining me tonight is playwright

Denise Mina, writer and class cyst, Natalie Haynes, and journalist and

broadcaster, John Sergeant. Quentin Tarantino has written and directed

some of the most violent and provocative films of recent years,

think Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds. In his

latest film he has turned to the theme of slavery in mid-19th

century America. He has generated more controversy by daring to

tackle such an historically sensitive suggest as entertainment.

Be warned, there will be blood. Django Unchained is a tribute to

the spaghetti western. His theme is the brutality of slavey. What is

your name? Django. Then you are exactly the one I'm looking for.

Jamie Foxx plays the film's hero, a slave who is freed by the

flamboyant Dr King Schulz, a German bounty hunter played by Christoph

Waltz. The state place as bounty on a man's head, I track that man, I

find that man, I killed that man, after I kill that man I transport

that man's body back to the authorities, sometimes that is

easier said that done. The suave Schulz trains Django as his partner,

and they have a killing spree across the Deep South, hunting down

wanted hen. Django's mission comes to the freeing of his wife,

Broomhilda. The unlikely duo infiltrate a Mississippi plantation,

owned by Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. I heard you been

telling people them dingos ain't no good, and nobody is selling

anything worth buying, what makes you such a dingo expert. Django

Unchained may be Tarantino's most violent movie yet, which is

certainly saying something. So does the film present an important

narrative about America's relationship with slavery? Or does

telling the story with a mixture of graphic violence and comedy fail to

give due weight to this important historical subject. What you said

was that this was my world, and in my world you got to get dirty, so

that's what I'm doing, I'm getting dirty.

Natalie, we have these amazing opening titles, technicolor,

spaghetti western, and then at the heart of it, rather deep thing

about slavery. How did you find that juxtaposition? It worked

really well for me. I'm a big Tarantino fan, I have seen all his

films. Generally when anybody says about something that deals with

things in a pop cultural way, comedians and Tarantino for sure,

people are dealing with the subject and not taking it serious because

they are frivolous, that person making the criticism is kind of an

idiot. He hasn't brought out a film since Cannes 2009 when Inglourious

Basterds came out. He spent four years working on this. To suggest

he's not giving it his undivided professional attention would be

folly. If you are suggesting it is so serious nobody can make a joke

anywhere near it, I don't feel that way, I think he gives an incredibly

respectful treatment in what he describes as the Holocaust of

slavey, and as it happens in his type of film doesn't seem

disrespectful. You mentioned Inglourious Basterds, there are

similarities, that was, in a way, a revenge fantasy about the Jews

getting revenge on the Nazis, here it is the turn of the slaves?

extraordinary the way he can take the subjects and say I know it

isn't historically accurate, but wouldn't it be great if in

Inglourious Basterds, a Jew West, and a black -- Jew ess and a

blackman kill the whole of the Nazi high command, and you think,

wouldn't it. And this, slavery, couldn't be worse or a more serious

subject we all need to k and he thinks, wouldn't it be great to

have Super Black killing all sorts of people in the southern states of

America. And suddenly you find yourself thinking, yes, instead of

saying no, no, you say, yes, and I like that bit. That thought it was

terrific, I really enjoyed it. has got flack for it, Lee low?'S

Annoyed, stop the press, he's always annoyed. He said this was

disrespectful to my ancestors. There is a place for saying that.

You are absolutely right, until these stories are in a populist

medium, they won't become familiar. You can only make films about

slavery that are serious and show how unremittingly grim it is, it

won't become a national story that people are aware of. It is amazing

that there aren't more stories about slavery, part of the reason

is it is put in the bracket of gigantic tragedy, and you are not

allowed to deal with it, except in a ref rent way, and it has to be

historically accurate. Actually the historical truth of it is, it is a

tragedy and carried on being a tragedy and they are still living

with the legacy today. The films are not the truth, films are

stories, and it is a great story. You are talking about an evening

out. You end up, although it is enormously long as a film, you

think, God that was incredible. And, it is in a cinema, it wouldn't work

so well on television, and you're back there in enjoying films like

when I was a kid, going to the movies thinking this is really

something isn't it. Even the statistics about the number of

people who went through one plantation in a year. In some ways

he is much more informative than a really dour miserable documentary.

It is different from everything the cow boys and Indians of John's

childhood given the level of violence? I'm not sure if the end

of Kill Bill 1 was as bloody, that might be the only rival. They are

paying tribute to the old cowboy films. There is a great moment I

don't want to give away, where somebody make as play on the Clint

Eastwood film, I won't spoil it is near the end. This man adores films,

he has gone through every single film of the period that used to

excite me, when I saw those titles, just like the technicolor titles of

my youth, I thought, yes! How does he know? Because he has gone back

through all this stuff. He has absorbed it and become obsessed by

it. He's a purist film maker, everyone talks about how can he do

the pulp stuff, he's always celebrating it t hardly anyone is

consistently writing brand-new screenplay, not remakes, not

adaptations, based on a book or comic or something else in another

field, he loves film, he makes films about how much he loves film.

I was watching Shane two weeks ago, everyone gets shot with one bullet

to the torso and that is them dead, there is no blood, it was really

disturbing. Watching this with all the gore. What is interesting,

there is two types of violence in the film, there is the almost

cartoon limbs spurting, and all this slightly Monty Pythonesque

stuff, but then there is the violence in how the slaves

themselves are treated, that is really horrific. The trouble is, at

the end of it you think, gosh, why am I accepting all this, there are

scenes of torture, so it is not just a matter of oh it is all

stylised violence, it is not, it is very unstylised some of the

violence. You do feel, shouldn't I be more shocked, shouldn't I think

this is reprehensible. That is a kind of awful trick that Tarantino

has played on us. Because some of these things you do wonder, it is

all very well if you are over 18, you are allowed to watch it, but

some people over 18 thinking that the answer lies in the gun, do you

really want them to see films like this? That does worry me. And in

Reservoir Dogs, he cuts off the things, it is not the gun relevant.

I say the when the issue of violence comes up in the film, I

think pain hurts big time in Tarantino, it is not casual, it is

not a beat like in the first Total Re-call, I didn't see it,

everything here hurts. The moment where she is shot in the leg, it is

nasty, and not casual. The big killing sprees look casual because

there is so much of it, but they are very theatrical rather than

anything else. It gives you the impression that if you have a

serious problem, a really serious problem, what do you do, you start

killing people. That is undeniably the way the narrative works. That

is true of all westerns. That is true of every single western ever

made. If you have the biggest gun you will probably win?

shouldn't we now worry about all these things. I should have worried

about it more n the cinema I'm watching this, why did I go along

with it. It is the massacres caused by these sorts of films, if you

think about something like The Wild Bunch, you would have had these

sorts of massacre, we are talking about the massacre that happened,

you would have had those sort of massacre happening then. He's

referencing Peckenpal, this is not a new thing. You have a mentally

ill teenager living in a house with machine guns, that is more likely

to be a cause. Everyone is talking about the influence of the media,

that is so transential, stop having machine guns with guns. They

delayed the opening because of the shooting. In the states it is so

controversial to say stop having machine guns throughout the house,

they didn't want to have the conversation. He got very angry in

an interview when he was asked about it. In another controversial

aspect of the film, picked up almost as much as the violence, is

the use of language in the film, what did you make of it? I went to

America in 1963, then it was a very, very, there was apartheid in the

southern states. I couldn't travel with the black maid in the house I

was staying at, she couldn't travel alongside me in the station wagon,

she had to sit in the back. In the buses in New Orleans, you sat in a

different place if you were black and white. I know what it was like

then, of course people used the word "nigger". We are talking about

the 1960s, this is 100 years before, and that was the way people

referred to them, "them"! That happened. For him to be criticised

for that, I didn't think. I thought, yes, this is absolutely correct.

you think it was necessary? In the context of this film, I absolutely

do. The character of Calvin Candie, Leonardo DiCaprio's character,

utterly villainous, this won't do great Oscar business, because there

isn't a single nice white American in the whole film, it is over two

hours long, it won't matter for the foreign press but it will for the

axe cad me. He's a brutal and poisonous person, it would be

strange if they did that. In The Patriot, where Mel Gibson who have

employees who happen to be black and everyone pretends there isn't

slavery. It would be wrong not to use language that was hateful in

its time. It sounds less vile than in Pulp Fiction. You find that word

so loaded you wouldn't comfortably use it. Of course I wouldn't, I

wasn't alive when it was in the 1960s. People think it is giving

currency to the word it is being normalised. In an historical drama?

In contemporary language you would be uncomfortable. I sat through

Pulp Fiction and I thought it was awesome. I find it troubling when

people themselves are watching it as a teenager and think they are

the same as Samuel L Jackson, no. You wouldn't say the word "nigger"

in the studio. No, I wouldn't. if you are sitting discussing the

film and they say it 90 times. say Broomhilda 90 times.

Let's move on to a very, very different subject, the Civil

Service where people don't use rude words at all. It has come in for a

lot of flak from the Conservatives this week for being unfit for

purpose and change. Even Tony Blair said time had passed them buy. It

is topical that we saw the return of the old favourite, Prime

Minister Prime Minister, a sitcom which David Cameron admitted

contained elements of truth. The characters are familiar, only the

faces and channel have changed. Weak willed Prime Minister Jim

Hacker, is played by weighing weighing weighing, and Henry

Goodman is the adviser Humphrey Appleby. UKTV Gold is home to a

series that used to be one of BBC Two's biggest hits. Sorry I'm late

t has been a terrible day. particular reason? You have read

about the cabinet split. Yes. you have seen what happened to the

FTSE, and the pound and the inflation forecast? Yes. And the

rising unemployment figures? Yes. How many particular reasons do you

want. The political sitcom began in the 1980s as Prime Minister Prime

Minister, starring Paul Eddington as minister of affairs, and Nigel

Hawthorne as his permanent secretary. According to the writers,

the programme showed MPs for what they really were, self-serving

people, concerned with fame, re- election and keeping their expenses.

Anybody else have an opinion, quickly? Prime Minister I don't

know very much about it, but it does sound a serious upheaval.

Rather expensive. A rather big move. I'm very much in favour of the

proposal myself. Me too. Absolutely! The brand was revived

in 2010 as a stage play, now turned into a six-part series. Jim Hacker

is now leading a coalition Government, and hopes to solve the

UK's financial crisis with cash from a transEuropean oil pipeline.

Here's the route. That looks pretty straight forward! With audiences

now more used to Malcolm Tucker's foul-mouthed outbursts in The Thick

Of It, does the silver-tongued sir Humphrey make an impact, or will it

nestle inbetween the reruns of The Good Life and Open All Hours?

John, you were at the recordings of these episodes, do you think it is

worth reviving. Given we have had so many other satirical programme,

particularly The Thick Of It? think so, but I would, wouldn't I.

I was the warm-up man for the series, whenever the cameras

stopped and they moved the fuorn tue about, I would talk to the

audience and tell them stories, funny, I hoped! I got very much

involved in it. I just thought it was terrific, I must say. For me, a

lot of these arguments that they put over, all right, the format is

as old as it was, it's 30 years old. It is a classic sitcom. I worked in

my first BBC job in comedy, I was in the same studio, gosh, more than

30 years ago, with Alan Bennett, performing in that way. The way

that works now does seem hopelessly old fashioned. But, compared with

the stage version, it is interesting how on television

people can listen, the reparity is much faster, and the actual

problems they are dealing with, of the permanent officials and the

politicians, is exactly the same. It rings very true to me. I spent

most of my professional life working at Westminster, and to me

this is it. You learn more from this than you would from The Thick

Of It. Reggie Maudling says he regards Prime Minister Prime

Minister as more documentary than comedy, is it relevant? I do think

it is relevant f it had been me, I would have, perhaps, kept the

character of Sir Humphrey, and changed the others. The trouble is,

the best case scenario, the absolute best case scenario, if

they nailed every single performance, it is karaoke, you

will do a reasonably good impression of people who gave

definitive performances of definitive characters to our

national pop culture. For me, at least, Henry Goodman is probably

the most successful in doing a reasonable job of being Nigel

Hawthorne, but David Haig is too shouty for me to play Jim Hacker.

To me Jim Hacker is still Paul Eddington, venal and terribly

haunted, which is what makes him tragic. The aggression of Haig

doesn't work for me, it is a theatrical performance. People

often change the characters and different actors play different

parts. They are so well known and they are iconic. What about

Shakespeare's plays with actors constantly playing different parts.

There is a lot of time between them playing it and then a second lot

came in. Can't we get over it? We do know the characters well, we

know the characters of lots of plays. How will that actor, what

will he bring to the part what will she bring to the part, that is

rather nice, isn't it, I rather like that. How much do you think

they have updated it when it comes to the subject matter, the Prime

Minister is head of a coalition, but not that much play is made of

that? I didn't like this at all, I thought it was very stagey. I

didn't like Prime Minister Prime Minister, I didn't like - Yes

Minister, and I didn't like others things. There is a documentary

after the first episode, it became so asolted with the Thatcher

Government that -- associated with the Thatcher Government they

wouldn't give it a chance. I'm sure it is eloquent about the dynamics

between a minister and their permanent civil servants, I'm sure

that is all very eloquent, but it is a one-trick pony, they are all

trying to get one over on each other. It is very stagey to the

studio audience. I'm sure because it comes from a stage play. They

make a joke and look to the audience for a laugh and move on.

If The Thick Of It is still too heavy going and intercut for people.

This is a nice, gentlele political comedy. These characters are nice,

The Thick Of It characters are all horrible? I don't think so. They

are funny, this wasn't that funny. There were jokes, you could see

them coming from four miles away. Those are the jokes I like! Is this

why you moved from comedy to journalism? I don't know, that's

the trouble. You are looking at it through different eyes. I spent a

lot of time at Westminster. A lot of people are fans and will watch

it and love it. It is not The Thick Of It, and it is very gentle.

characters are amusing, the way that they deal with the subjects

are incredible in the sense that you are getting a perpect

description of the relationship, however obscure, between the civil

servants and the politicians, and some of these subjects, these

actual issues, it is not The West Wing, because we prefer jokes

decribing our politics. That is interesting, the way that we do

treat politics on television in a different way from other countries.

The West Wing, Borgen is back on our screen. Very serious, but also

a more benign view, I would say, generally, of politicians, than we

tend to do? It is true, both the Americans, and deorn certainly the

Danes, as we know extensively, if they don't necessary approve of all

politicians, you can still write a piece which suggest a real

reverence and respect for the political process itself. It seems

to me that taste is rather less than that, when we have a political

drama, there is always skullduggery, nobody is good. Why do a million

people switch on to Borgen in Danish with subtitles. Because it

is awesome. It is interesting that we have not, as a country, we some

how can't cope with this, where as little Denmark, twinkles on with

perfectly sensible people doing things, their there are marriages

falling apart and so on. They are not intrinsicly evil. There is

something about us that -- intrinsically evil, there is

something about us that wants to think of our politicians as corrupt

and evil? It is about shambolic political process, you must say is

true. And in itself is quite funny because of. That maybe it is the

British sense of humour. I wonder if it is. I would argue with John,

I think it does have moments where I think it is absolutely spot on

about the political process. Omnishambles has passed into the

political discourse. There was one episode where the hapless

Government minister came up with an initiative about fourth sector

Pathfinders, I could almost seen that written in some policy paper.

A lot of it was, the only thing is, The Thick Of It was very much of

that sort of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair period. The trouble

about that, it was wonderful, of its time, and think did they really

do this and behave badly, did they, in fact, spend a an awful lot of

time being concerned about how it was presented and there was mayhem

behind the scenes, but in the front it was all concerned about how it

will work. That was correct. There is something much more timeless and

effective about that Yes Minister humour, that's all. People can

judge for themselves by looking at Yes Minister, which continues on

UKTV Gold on Tuesday at 9.00. January can be a tough month,

navigating our way through all this terrible gold weather, detox and

dieting as well. Perhaps that's why weight loss and memoirs have come

together this month on screen and on the page.

This week saw the launch of E4's new drama, My Mad Fat Diary, it

tells of the battle against weight and mental breakdown. The 15th of

July 1996, something had to be done. One, past through the mystical

orgasam gateway, two, see someone naked, three, kiss someone. Must be

human. A different teenage perspective on body image and self-

loathing, comes in Navel Gazing, the debut work of blogger, Anne H

Putnam, Ann was 17 years old and 20 stone in weight, when she underwent

gastric bypass surgeon at the same time as her father, the story

begins before the operation. Ann was a young, overweight girl in all

George Osborneia, facing daily struggle, both emotional and

physical. This time it is a swimsuit. "I spwend down and grab

the straps of my suit, I pull down, trying to make it as fast as

possible. The suit takes a second to move, once it does it sweeps up

my body as a tidal wave, pushing mounds and rolls of fat out of its

way. When I put the straps into place, it digs into my flesh ".

Those scenes were sort of difficult to write, because I had had to go

back there. Which, you know, I don't do very often. I do think

that your brain tries to protect you from your own bad memories, the

book isn't all bad memories, but I didn't want to lose that immediacy.

Despite losing seven stone from the gastric bypass, Anne then undergoes

cosmetic surgery twice, hoping to achieve the mythical perfect body

in her mind. Instead, she begins to understand her problems run deeper.

"Sometimes I hear myself talking to God about the thoughts going

through my mind about my body, sometimes I want to say shut the

fuck up, it is so boring, if I can't find a way to control my body

to my will, I have to do my mind, I have to get on with my life."

People ask how do you write a personal story without thinking

about the world's response, I never thought the world would see it. I

wrote this book for me. At the same time it is comforting and

validating to know that people are relating to the story. People from

all different walks. Do you think this is purely a memoir, or does it

have literary merits as well? couldn't stop reading this book,

there is quite a lot to object to, she's very open, she tells you

things about herself you don't necessarily know, but she can

really write. I couldn't stop reading it, it was a compulsive

read. It is half way between a blog and a book, she tells you very

personal things, that you might find in a blog but shocking in a

book. The chapter structure copies one another, which often happens in

blogs, you have half an event, skreptive event, then she describes

feeling really fat or being fat in the second half. It becomes

repetitive after a while. I feel for her, she, you worry for young

writers, because she can write. If she writes War In Peace next, all

she will be asked is what weight is she. Bloggers have a short life. We

are one act, and for a writer, hopefully it is much, much longer,

writers traditionally hold back much more, you feel like maybe

she's exposed herself a bit too much at the beginning. She can

really write. I feel she has been cruelly let down by her editor, to

be honest. It is true that blogs are of necessity more repetitive.

If you are reading it once a week, or every few days, you don't mind

hearing the same phrases over again, this book, I kept thinking I have

come back off an ad break, you get a recap of what happened beforehand.

You just told me this, and you used the same language. It must have

been edited in America, the chapter heading is hilarious, given it is a

British edition, San Francisco, California, Milan, Italy, oh, Milan,

Italy, England, OK! It is imported wholesale and they could have done

with a cut. Beyond the editing floor, it is painfully honest, she

goes into huge detail about exact loo what has happened to her and

what she feels about -- exactly what has happened to her and what

she feels about? I'm not the target audience. I didn't feel like an

overweight 16-year-old girl, I thought, oh for goodness sake. I

was very put off by the fact that there seemed to be so much money

involved. There is a lot of money involved. The parents had paid for

this gastric band thing, and for her father, and this idea that

travel was some how sort of impressive. It is not impressive

any more. If you have money, get on an aircraft and go to Rome and all

these place. But the idea that we are meant to be impressed by all

this. I felt felt it was horribly American. It is not part of our

culture. We don't talk about things like this. I'm not sure about that.

I think people do increasingly, obesity is something a lot of

people wrestle with, perhaps it is more of an issue for women than men.

It is not the dealing with obesity that is problem mattingic for me.

She doesn't go into depth about why she's eating or the family

background. She actually says diets don't apply to her. It is hard to

be sympathetic, she's a really handsome woman, there is a big

picture in the back, as soon as you open it up and you think, I don't

feel sorry for you. It is predicated on her getting what she

want. I felt she didn't want to be thin but Carrie Bradshaw, and not

just a boyfriend but a beautiful boyfriend. She goes I don't know

how I got here, I thought as a human being I'm glad you got there,

but as a reader I need causes. other programme about teenage

obesity out on E4 My Mad Fat Diary. This is Rae Earl from Lincolnshire,

with her problematic mother. Do you know...and then I said it, the

worst thing I have ever said to my mum, and, as I'm feeling megaguilty

any way, we might as well do the top three...Mum, Why is your bum

bigger than all the other mum's? Rae Earl! Come on. I wanted a Kylie

one. Maybe we couldn't afford a Kylie one. Maybe if you hadn't made

dad leave we would be able to get nice things. Rachel Earl! It's no

wonder I went mental is it, when I've got the biggest screw up in

the history of screw ups for a parent. Go on, say it.... Rachel

Earl! John, I don't imagine you are the target audience for this either.

Maybe I have been softened up by Navel Gazing, maybe it worked on me

and changed me. Because I found myself rather liking this. I

thought that the acting was superb. I don't know, I did feel, oh good

this is British. I shouldn't say that, but I felt the way it was

being approached was very much more what I could be used to. Maybe

because there were jokes, maybe because of the way it is described,

maybe it was sort of realistic, maybe you were much closer to the

character for whatever reason. You did feel you hadn't got all this

American bullshit, I'm sorry, I shouldn't use that word. It is

shocking! It is too late. You go for shock value throughout! Going

for word after word now, that is what I felt about it. I thought

this was fantastic. It is everything you want Navel Gazing to

be. It is poetic, beautiful, it feels true. There is this brilliant

relationship between the mother and daughter, where they are feeding

each other, they are co-feeding each other. They have this big

cupboard that lights up full of food you are not supposed to eat. I

think even talking about, if you meet someone like Caitlin Moran

about the meaning of fatness, she doesn't seem to have read Fat is a

Feminist Issue, or any seminal books about what it means. This

defence into women's sexuality, you have a millennia of women policing

their sexuality, and all of a sudden we are entitled to it t and

suddenly we are all policing one another's physicality, there is a

total consistency to that history. We see that very vividly in her

relationship with her mother, the mother is feeding her and she's

feeding her mother. It is clearly a terribly dysfuntional relationship,

in that moment where she says what she said, she's right. But they

keep it unjudgmental, she loves her mother and she loves her. All

through Navel Gazing, I was thinking "show don't tell", you are

telling me you're sassy and smart, show me. All through this we see

Rae fronting out the horrific situation she finds herself in,

that is what I needed, I'm totally on her side and completely believe

all these people want to be friends with you is believable, and the

fact that you are fat is not defining for them, you are showing

the other side of your character. It is the cusp of her being funny

and then you can't bear to watch it when there is the fire alarm when

she's in the change room in the bikini she doesn't want to be in,

she drapes herself in the gigantic alligator? I think Natalie is right

about this, you have this, she's really decribing a situation, but

the message is quite clear, the message, of course, is that she's a

person, if she can accept that, of course she will have friends, of

course she will be one of the gang. We all know this is the case. The

way it is played is if it might go wrong. She might not be able to

manage it, that is a terrific, a cliff edge, isn't it, the idea that

she's going to escape that dilemma because she as going to understand,

unlike the other woman, I won't go there! She's going to understand if

she's just herself, she has all sorts of qualities. That then comes

over, and we're all relieved. Aren't we? You don't feel this is a

horror story against this young woman. Very interesting in the way

it is produced, a flavour of the graphic, bringing the diary to life.

It is gorgeous. It is so beautifully directed. There is

shots where she's having a binge, and she talks about her

relationship with food, which Anne H Putnam doesn't go into at all.

She talks more about her relationship with her surgeon than

her relationship with food. She's eating and she gets up and shuts

the blinds. It is just that absolute self-disgust. Ian Hart who

plays the psychiatrist, he should be on tele, every night. And the

lead, I didn't know she was a Scottish actor, she's really good.

She gets more beautiful as the episodes go on, she is very

beautiful. What tends to happen. sounds like we all recommend that

one. The traditional image of the Vikings as wild-haired dirty

savages, wearing horned helmets doing barbaric acts of pillage go

back from accounts of early Christian travellers to Wagner's

Ring cycle. Now a new programme about them sets out to overturn

stereotypes. The national museum of Scotland is the only UK venue for a

touring show of over 500 art facts from the Swedish History Museum.

Through a host of treasures, including jewellery, weapons,

carvings, and household items, the exhibition builds up a picture of

how people from the Viking era actually lived. It sets out to

dispel a number of myths, not least the true meaning of the word Viking.

It doesn't denote a race but activity. Men and women would go on

a Viking, which could have been a peaceful trade trip, we are told,

as much as a more violent raid. The vibrant bading and elaborate

metal work of Norse craftsmen, reveal in their designs connections

to Britain and Ireland, and to the Baltic and as far as the Black Sea.

The exhibition includes extensive finds from individual grave sites,

ills straigt the lives of a wealthy woman and a child. One of the

misconceptions is it was a strict male society. In this exhibition we

may show very traditional "female" objects, but they tell different

stories to the traditional female objects. That way we can show that

the role of women was very diversified. You could be many

kinds of different women, they also participated to a much larger

degree in traditionally male activities. Am lets and statues

show pagan rituals, honouring the Gods of Norse mythology, they were

never gods of organised religion. The Vikings had well established

customs relating to life and death. One of the centre pieces of the

exhibition is the outline of a burial boat, recreated by the only

surviving parts, the metal rivets. There is an attempt to de-horn the

Viking helmet, will visitors be convinced by the new perspective on

ancient warriors. Natalie, were you convinced by the new perspective?

was, I liked the exhibition very much. I felt I only had a limited

knowledge of Vikings, because this exhibition emanates from

Scandinavia, it was an exhibition there which has travelled pretty

much intact to here, and then had some bits of the national museum of

Scotland's Viking collection added to it, essentially it is their home

crowd. Our vision of the Vikings, I think, pretty much, we see them

when they are over here, having a bit of a pillage. And then we don't

really think about where they go home to. This exhibition is all

about that who did the farming, who was left while they were away. I

always thought of the Vikings, as you see the clothes when they come

in, bland, plain colours, suddenly you go around a few corners and

there are brightly coloured strings of Beads and other things. They

were like the Romans. There was a number of keys, said to be the

symbol of Viking women being in charge, or having a strong role in

the home? That misconception of Vikings as men who come and take

your stuff, is, you know, automatically excluding women at

all. It is nice to see women represented at all. That is the

point of the exhibition, women are represented. I found it, I wasn't

quite sure what the exhibition was about. I came out and wondered why

did they go travelling, it didn't answer. That it is a beautiful

exhibition, there are lots of beautiful examples, as soon as you

go in you start reading, you are reading all the way through. I

wanted to get a book and read it and then go and see the exhibition.

But, if you are interested in jewellery, there is incredible

jewellery, absolutely beautiful. And for me, one of the outstanding

things was the boat, the burial boat and the nails. That is amazing.

It is an art exception. I thought it was an installation, it was like

corn kneelia Parker art? What a great thing, you would see the

rivets on a tray and think, meh! To give them a three dimensional

aspect, it is like, look what you did, a wonderful moment. Our own

warrior battled through to the snow and didn't get to the Viking

exhibition. In general what did you think about the approach, it is a

revisionist approach? Every age has to look at these things again. The

Vikings were incredibly impressive in a military sense. Of course they

went abroad, largely to fight and again territory. That was the

tremenduously important part of their lives. And then they settled.

We have got to accept, as time goes on, we will look at those things in

different ways. The recent series on the dark ages, it was a

wonderful series, they turned out to be full of light, and the

Vikings turned out to be friendly farmers. That is a British

misconception, I lived in Bergen as a kid, there is no misconception,

it is typically British to say they are guys to steal your jewellery.

It was lovely to see jewellery and crosses stolen and melted to make

hat. They were fighters. And there was even a Buddha, to show how far

they travelled and traded? Yes, some copies again of glass beakers,

and it makes you understand how far the Roman reach was. Tarantino's

next film, the Vikings. They had slaves, that makes sense. Good

thought. I would have had a few more dates. Vikings runs until the

12th of May at the national museum of Scotland and Edinburgh. More

details on the website, along with everything else we have discussed

this evening. Now that's almost all from us tonight. I thank you very

much from Natalie Haynes, Denise Mina and John Sergeant. Next week

Kirsty will be here to look at Spielberg's new film, Lyndon, and

an exhibition of portraits by Manet. We leave you with a brief taste of

one of Quentin Tarantino favourite spaghetti westerns, out on DVD, it