A Picasso doc that – amazingly – focuses on how great he was

Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the question, ‘Should we cancel Picasso?’ He is, after all, ‘the ultimate example of problematic white guys clogging up the artistic canon’.

Given the programme’s title – and the BBC’s increasing loss of nerve – you could be forgiven for thinking Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast was bound to get bogged down in the same tedious and apparently non-mythical 2020s obsessions. Instead, Thursday’s first episode of three proved gratifyingly deft at dealing with them.

Much as we might wish otherwise, it would now be somewhere between odd and impossible for a Picasso documentary not to raise all over again the well-worn questions of his behaviour towards women and his use of African-art techniques to make money for himself.