My article about Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius is now live at the History Reclaimed website. It's an honour to have my contribution to the debate about the BBC shared at a site founded by so many eminent historians and academics. Below is additional material that I did not include in my article for reasons of length. 
  In an earlier post, I  decried a BBC documentary on Shakespeare that astonished me for the amount of misinformation it conveyed. Now it's time to clutch my pearls over the same treatment meted out to Jane Austen.  ​I didn’t see this documentary when it aired in the UK in May, but I recently found it on an online streaming service
     If you are in need of another eye-opening lecture on slavery, colonialism, empire, class prejudice and economic injustice, set to a soundtrack of driving violins, this is the program you've been looking for. If, however, you assumed a program called "Rise of a Genius" would offer an explication of Austen’s wit and her unique talents, you will be disappointed. You can get a sample of the mood of this program by viewing this preview here. 
   The BBC has given us many shows on Jane Austen over the years, on both radio and television, and if you stack these older programs up against this one, you will see  how respect for serious scholarship has been replaced with—whatever this is. If this is the best that the BBC could muster for Austen’s 250th birthday, then the BBC is a hollowed-out shell, a travesty of a mockery of a sham...

    The Revealer of Secrets is the last-published title in the long list of novels attributed to the anonymous author of The Woman of Colour (1809). It is the story of a house, narrated by the house. 
​   Whoever wrote this novel, I'm going to declare that it was not the author of the first novels in the chain, such as The Duke of Clarence (1795) or Rebecca (1799). The difference in detail and narrative complexity between the early novels and the later novels is striking. It’s hard to imagine any writer maturing and improving her style to such a degree over the years. It’s like when one of your students hands in some homework that they clearly didn’t write themselves—you just know.
   On the other hand, I initially thought the style of this novel didn't match the later novels such as The Splendour of Adversity (1814) either, because I was well into the first chapter and there was no mention of God, Heaven, or salvation. The story begins with an unrelated prologue consisting of two old men standing in front of the house and debating how old it might be. However, once we get into the actual narrative, the moralizing strain arises...

    ​You may have seen some news headlines about a fracas over in the UK over the institutional bias of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC. Top BBC executives have resigned over allegations of bias in the news department. These documented examples of agenda-driven journalism indicate an abandonment of basic journalistic standards.
     Well, I’m here to say that something exceedingly strange and disappointing is going on in BBC Arts as well. Since I live in Canada, I don’t have access to all BBC channels, but I happened to watch an episode of the three-part docu-drama Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius (2023) when it aired on our local Knowledge Network Channel. So I’m late to this party, but I want to clutch my pearls anyway. 
    ​​   Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius is technically a documentary, or I suppose we could call it info-tainment--cultural education made entertaining and accessible for people who might not have much of a grounding in English history or literature. At least I think that must be the intended audience, judging by the elementary History 101 stuff the talking heads give us. The talking head segments are interspersed with re-enactments of Shakespeare’s life and times. The actor who plays Shakespeare elbows his way through the mucky, ribald, dangerous, streets of London with a helpful voice-over: “He was living at a time where everybody was just swimming in muck, sex, and you know, violence”.
    But keeping things simple is no excuse for the errors and the opinions dressed up as facts that are presented here. The same BBC that green-lit this production also gave us, for example, the radio program In Our Times, in which distinguished academics discussed all aspects of British and International culture. No institution in the world has more resources to draw on for a compelling and accurate portrait of Shakespeare than the BBC. I'm not saying this to sneer at the credentials of the diverse panel of "historians, actors and experts" who are the Shakespeare experts used in this docu-drama. I am self-taught myself and only recently acquired a Master's Degree (by research) in English Literature. But it's the BBC's responsibility to use basic research skills and fact check any of the assertions their talking heads make.

   Boy, what a slog. Frankly, I skimmed through most of this book. I had assumed that The Duke of Clarence was an historical novel but as it turns out, it’s a gothic novel set in England and France in the 15th century. Gothic novels aren’t my thing. I just can’t get excited about abducted and immured heroines, evil priests, secret passages, dastardly noblemen, and garrulous servants. So I confess—I didn’t catch every little detail explaining how and why our nobly-born hero Edgar De Montford ended up being mislaid and becoming a foundling.
    But the never-ending backstories with their thwarted love affairs and general perfidy--I mean, if you were a noblewoman unjustly immured in a tower for sixteen years and out of nowhere, two different people find you—coincidentally on the same night—and they asked you, Oh my god, what happened? Who put you here? would you give them a brief precis as you were running through the door to freedom, and maybe get into the details later after you've had a hot bath and a good meal? Or would you spend hours telling them the whole story from the beginning, recalling entire conversations and your every gesture with it? I’d be high-tailing it out of there. 
     As mediocre as this book is, I will say in justice to this authoress, and in contrast with Eliza Kirkham Mathews' youthful effort The Phantom, the backstories at least all tie together and relate to the central mystery of the story.