most probably on BBC, but it could also have been a BBC import on US public television. British presenter, talking about how an industry evolved in a certain area, because of the local natural resources, etc. It sounds quite boring and stuffy as I type it out, but it was really very fascinating. Unfortunately it’s been quite a while, and I don’t have hardly a detail to add, but it did seem to be part of a whole series in this vein.
Any thoughts on what it could have been and if it can still be found, oh Teeming Millions?
The Ascent of Man was also a fascinating series; it was the first thing I remember watching regularly on PBS back in '75 (before even Monty Python was aired in my market). The creator/writer/presenter Jacob Bronowski conceived it in response to Sir Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, which he described as (as near as I can remember the quote) “a very good history of art, but to tell the story of mankind you’d need to talk about evolution, chemistry, physics, mathematics, architecture, agriculture…”
I remember William Shatner, of all people, appearing in a mid-Seventies documentary series like that back when I was a kid. He was surprisingly good in it. Was there an American version of Connections?
Me too, I got a season of DVDs last Christmas. What I loved in particular was how he’d take you on a long, winding road of coincidence+causality to show how a bunch of disconnected events could lead to a modern invention.
Sometimes, though, the connections were a bit far-fetched. I remember one episode where the chain of events broke down completely (around the introduction of guncotton, I think).
