Fight Club: A History of Violence, Wednesday 17th October, Yesterday, 9pm
The first rule of Fight Club: A history of violence, is that if you donât have a beard, you donât know sh*t.
As such, this weekâs episode of the four-part documentary series is essentially a collection of different facial hair telling you things about fighting.
In keeping with this, last weekâs wonderful blogger-cum-historian Lucy Inglis has been ditched and replaced with a moustache, albeit a moustache which seems to know what itâs talking about and sounds like itâs smoked a hundred a day since conception.
On top of that, thereâs also a beard that may once have been attached to a local historian and likes to lie in fields, and a wiry scottish goatee that used to be a prize fighter.
All of the beards and their attendant experts are, for some reason, exclusively shown wandering around the countryside, which is really rather pleasant and has afforded me the great pleasure of dubbing them the âexperts in their fields.â
Even better, Sean Beanâs back with his trademark gravelly claptrap (âHe had his first training – with his fists!â?) and my favourite from last week, Professor Posh, has returned for another episode of genteel linguistic squirming.
Another return, albeit one less welcome, is that of the slow-motion, shaky-cam reconstruction fight scenes. Not only are they extremely boring, but I also worry that they and their ilk are raising a generation of children who think that a fight is conducted by aggressively shaking oneâs head from side to side and listening to cello music.
Of course, this is no bad thing anti-social behaviour-wise, but it does raise the frightening prospect of a future documentary by an ancient, decrepit Sean Bean, announcing sagely that, âYoung lads oâ tâ twenty fust century used ta settle thea bitta disputes by wobblin thea âeads ân listenin ta Elgar on thea i-Phones.â?
Anyway, as the reconstructions are the only part of the programme that isnât the knowledgeable rural beards talking, and the reconstructions are not only boring but actually socially-damaging, the entirety of the show depends on how interesting the aforementioned agrarian brain-beards actually are.
Well, the answer is, more so than last week, but still not as interesting as many people, having seen the showâs title, will expect.
