Chronicle (British TV programme)

BBC first broadcast a regular archaeology programme on radio introduced by Glyn Daniel in 1946 titled The Archaeologist. This was followed by a popular television quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? from 1952, and Buried Treasure broadcast from 1954 to 1959. In 1966, the first controller of BBC Two, David Attenborough, thought that there was sufficient interest in archaeology and established a special unit on the subject, the Archaeological and Historical Unit, to produce Chronicle. Other presenters included the archaeologists Glyn Daniel, Colin Renfrew, Mortimer Wheeler and David Drew, and the historian John Julius Norwich. The programme ended in 1991 after the death of its editor Bruce Norman. Most of the subjects were on ancient civilisations, with some on biographies, philosophy and various other aspects of archaeology such as industrial, underwater and amateur archaeology. A selection of excerpts and full programmes are available at the BBC archive website. ==Reception==

Critical After a shaky start, the programme went on to produce a series of high quality documentaries and it was considered a high point of British documentary. However, it attracted some criticism for sensationalising some of the subjects, for example in the three episodes by Henry Lincoln on the Rennes-le-Château "mystery" and Knights Templar conspiracy theory broadcast in 1972, 1974, and 1979. The conspiracy theory was further expounded in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and later became the inspiration for Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. It was also criticised for its "soft-centered approach" on such subjects as the Mary Rose. Ratings The show had good viewing figures for documentaries, rising from one million in 1973 to 2.5 million in 1983. Its most successful episodes were broadcast during the 16-hour coverage over three days of the raising of the Tudor warship Mary Rose in October 1982, which gained a cumulative audience of 20 million in the UK as well as other viewers in Europe. ==Episodes==

This is an incomplete list. The programme celebrated its 100th episode in 1974, and its 200th episode was broadcast in 1984. 1960s {{Episode table |overall=3 |background=#005F6C |title=25 |director=20 |aux2=20|airdate=12 |aux2T=Written / Presented by| country=UK |episodes= 1967-05-13 and ep of 1967-09-16 was two weeks later than the 1967-09-02 it should have been but returned to pattern on following ep--> 1970s 1980s 1990s ==References==