h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Keep It Simple, Stupid).

I watched an old episode of Horizon (Nova in the US) last week, from 1980. This one, actually - The Mondragon Experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMvktpKDmo What a breath of fresh air

No constant, obtrusive and unnecessary incidental music (in fact, no music at all, apart from that marvellous old Horizon theme music at the end, albeit an early 80s synthed-up version); no celebrity narrator; some wonderfully old-school animated diagrams; no pointless effects (especially no tilt-shift shots); no wacky camera angles; and best of all, no 'dramatic reconstructions'.

Those are two words virtually guaranteed to make me avoid a documentary. I used to wonder if it was a way to cut costs, to pad things out, but it can't be, not when you consider the expense of hiring writers, actors, directors, the whole crew, and yet it brings virtually nothing to the party for me. In the case of historic documentaries there's usually no way of knowing the intimate details. I can see an argument for it some instances - perhaps to illustrate how armies were lined up on an ancient battlefield for instance. That becomes another kind of animated diagram in a sense.

But when we get down to the personal level and the producers are trying to dramatise the feelings, emotions and actions of individuals, it's a pointless exercise. At that level it's little more than conjecture and dramatic licence. The job of a documentary is to be factual; to convey and impart knowledge. Adding all the bells and whistles that documentary makers seem to believe are necessary now detracts from that job. If I want to see a dramatisation of the events, I'll wait for the film.

I remember seeing that when it was first on...