Last night on television Closing the door on the house that history built
TV history is shrinking. First came The Secret History of Our Streets, looking at Britain through its archetypal residential roads. Last year, we had Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain, about the impact of individual bombs on our streets. Now, A House Through Time (BBC Two) spent four hour-long episodes delving into the past of a single dwelling in Liverpool.
Thankfully, this narrowing focus didn’t mean a loss of insight. The devil truly was in the detail. It was like lifting a stone to find a microcosmic universe beneath.
This final episode about 62 Falkner Street took us from 1945 to the present day – and our first chance to meet people who actually lived in the four-storey Georgian terrace. The scene-stealer was twinkling octogenarian June Furlong, who posed nude for neighbour John Lennon. “If I’d kept all the letters he sent me, I’d be in blooming South Kensington now, I tell you,” she said, laughing.
We heard first-hand testimony of the Toxteth riots and how the Aids epidemic devastated this bohemian enclave. Miranda, the younger sister of gay resident Mark Merino, spoke movingly about his final days. “We didn’t waste time being morbid. We made every moment as wonderful as possible, because those memories were going to have to last me a long time,” she said, with a heartbreaking, brave smile.
It made a compassionate, compelling way to trace the shifting social and political landscape, from post-war austerity to the Swinging Sixties, from Eighties unemployment to 21st century re-gentrification – which, pleasingly, has restored the house to its former glory.
Skilfully threaded together by passionate presenter David Olusoga, this series wove a colourful tapestry of British life across 200 years. The house’s varied inhabitants produced some cracking yarns: of lonely widows, love-struck tailors, philandering watchmakers and the wealthy cotton broker who went to debtor’s prison and ended up fighting in the American Civil War.
Olusoga’s interviews and archivedelving were fleshed out with evocative newsreel footage and animated graphics. This was social history viewed through a property prism. Who Do You Think You Are? built from bricks and mortar, rather than bloodlines.
Later this year, Olusoga goes to the other end of the scale, as part of the presenting team on Civilisations – an epic sequel to Kenneth Clark’s landmark 1969 series – alongside Mary Beard and Simon Schama. On this evidence, Clark’s legacy is in safe hands. Michael Hogan
If anyone is a bona fide cat person, it’s Professor Alan Wilson. To track cheetahs, he built a plane from scratch and learnt how to fly it. He was one of the researchers featured in the final episode of Big Cats (BBC One) – but he had stiff competition. Kevin Richardson had lived alongside lions to study their behaviour (at one moment a lioness wrapped him up in what looked like the world’s scariest cuddle). Then we met Dr Andrew Hearne, who had dedicated 12 years to the rare Borneo Bay Cat, in which time he’d managed to capture just 60 images.
It’s a good thing the results could be so exciting. Mountain lions, for example, were thought to be solitary, or “lonely”, as narrator Bertie Carvel purred. In a concrete industrial complex in Africa, a surprisingly large number of serval cats had moved in. Why? The animals were drawn by the rodents that had populated the man-made reservoirs.
The relationship between predators and humans wasn’t always harmonious and the film showed how people were working to mitigate inevitable conflict as species adapted to the urban sprawl. In Mumbai, an educational programme had reduced the number of leopard attacks on people. Dogs, however, were still unlucky. The solution? Paint the canine with spots. No self-respecting dog wants to be dressed up as a cat.
Considering how elusive cats are, the footage was impressive, from wide shots of a pride strutting through the dust to the detail of a cheetah’s pale amber eyes. The narrative was forward-thinking, intelligent and full of intriguing facts, stories and people. At the end of the episode, a couple of Iberian Lynx were released. As they leapt across the hills, the crowd cheered. Just 15 years ago, the species was on the brink of extinction. There is hope for the big – and the little – cats. Lucy Jones
A House Through Time Big Cats