Time Team: Very Old Stories by Keenan Powell

For the past year or so, I’ve been watching Time Team, a BBC archeological series no longer produced. But here’s the thing: it ran for twenty years with 280 episodes. You can binge all you like. Some of the later seasons are now shown on Prime. More seasons are available on Youtube.

It took me a while to figure out what I liked about this show and then it hit me. Time Team isn’t your regular documentary. Each segment is a story populated with a cast of archetypical characters.

Each show opens at a new location with a shot of the ever-in-motion presenter, Tony Robinson. Sir Anthony to his friends is an English actor who first came to light in the US playing Baldrick in the Blackadder series. He explains to us the location of the new dig, its history, what they’re hoping to find, and ever reminds us the dig will be completed in just three days. He’s the archetypical jester, the fun-loving character striving for light-heartedness. I like how he’s in constant motion, reminding us storytellers to keep it moving.

The late Mick Aston, of the flowing white hair, is the wizard. He even looks like Merlin and Gandalf, doesn’t he? He was an archeologist specializing in Early Medieval landscape archeology. He was the expert of experts who everyone turns to with a question. He had a lovely, kind way of presenting information, a rare quality.

Phil Harding is my favorite.  A great lumbering man with flowing golden locks, he is the one who actually digs. I love watching him at the beginning of each show growing impatient to get his hands dirty. He’s our hero, the one who gets dirty looking for the stuff the experts analyze.

Helen Geake is an archeologist specializing in Anglo-Saxon artifacts. She’s the one bent over a tiny bit, usually a coin or fragment of jewelry, carefully dusting it off, and then reading the inscription, and explaining where the minerals and the jewels were mined all the while it looks like a lump of mud to me. It could be a stretch, but I think she fulfills the archetype of the lover, not because there is romance in the show, but because Phil’s finds are presented to her.

Last, but not least, is Mick “The Dig” Worthington, the heavy equipment operator who worked an excavator with the delicacy of a pastry chef. He’s Phil’s ally.

After the premise is laid out, the fun and games begin: the digging. Mick peels off top layers of soil with his digger until Phil sees something exciting and then he jumps into the hole and starts scraping away with a trowel.  They dig up castles, crannogs (man-made islands), burial mounds, shipwrecks, and ruins of all types. They even dug up a WWII fighter plane once. There are comic moments too. Poor Phil gets dressed up a lot and learns how to joust, shoot a bow and arrow, debate in Latin and insult someone in Anglo-Saxon. When I first started watching, if they found something Victorian, I thought “Hey, that’s cool!” only to see them pitch it into a box with a “Pfft, just Victorian.” Apparently the Victorian era is like the day before yesterday to the British.

As the segment progresses, they find stuff, leading to victory, or they don’t find stuff, leading to defeat. Often there will be false victory, found something but not what they’re looking for, or false defeat, found nothing so they open a new trench. In the end, there is a denouement topped off with copious amounts of beer consumed.

And for you murdermongers: there’s bodies. Lots and lots of bodies. Many with clues. Hastily buried and ritually buried. Mass graves, double graves, and single graves. Crushed skulls, missing limbs, embedded with the killing weapon, bound hands and feet, and bodies with no explanation at all.

So if you got some time on your hands and would like a good story, I highly recommend.