History on the fly

Norma Percy’s latest documentary, Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace (BBC2, Monday), was another remarkable production from Brook Lapping, a company that specialises in catching history on the fly, as it whizzes past. The first episode (of three) covered 1999 and 2000, when Bill Clinton became the latest US president to imagine that he could do some good. He was wrong, but you had to admire him for trying, with bravery, optimism and that slightly alarming secret smile of his.

The Brook Lapping style only works if you have the main players on camera, telling exactly what happened, and by some miracle they had managed to get them all. Except for Yasser Arafat, of course, though they had library film of him, too. But there was Ehud Barak, then prime minister of Israel, Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who charged hither and yon like a particularly nimble Brahmin bull, plus the interpreters.