History documentary

Bradley Walsh: Egypt’s Cosmic Code may sound like a pitch by Alan Partridge – but, impressively, the programme itself manages to be even odder than its title. Naturally, Tuesday’s opening episode began with Bradley emphasising that his interest in Ancient Egypt long predates his signing of the contract for the show. Indeed, it was back when he was an apprentice at Rolls-Royce that he first realised ‘whoever built the pyramids, it certainly wasn’t the Ancient Egyptians 4,500 years ago’. Sharing his scorn for this discredited idea was Tony McMahon, an ‘investigative historian’ who showed up now and again to say bonkers things in an authoritative and sonorous manner. Given that

Congratulations, everyone! It turns out we’re much better than those bigoted old Brits of the 1950s. After all, they were ‘class-obsessed, overwhelmingly white and Christian, and deeply conservative about the role of women’ — whereas we ‘accept difference and diversity in a way that would have been almost unthinkable in 1953’. This was the reassuring message in the first episode of New Elizabethans by Andrew Marr, where Marr surveyed Britain’s changing social attitudes since the Queen came to the throne, and liked what he saw. These days, needless to say, the ‘great man theory’ of history has rather fallen out of fashion — so instead Marr brought us a sort