> I honestly can't tell if it's meta-parody. And that's why I'll keep watching. I'm kinda in the same boat. But I think one of the things I like about Curtis i

> I honestly can't tell if it's meta-parody. And that's why I'll keep watching. I'm kinda in the same boat. But I think one of the things I like about Curtis is that he's made me read more about things I didn't know about. For example I'd never given much thought about Afghanistan (other than Afghan coats) until the Soviet Union invaded. I was an early teenager (I'm in my mid 50s now), but reasonably interested in world politics, and even back then, and the Afghan war seemed like another cold war proxy conflict, and same old same old. There were many events like that for me, and then I bumped into Curtis in 1992 and his Pandora's box series and I was sort of wowed at his take on the world. These wee snippets of, often obscure, history made tantalisingly accessible and fascinating by the way he assembles his final cuts, so much so that I went off and bought books on history rather than be informed by the opinion pieces in the Times (London), The Guardian etc. I will caveat that I realise history books are not free of bias. Whatever he's doing I think it's a good thing. Sure he often reaches no conclusions but he throws many ideas at us to make us think. Maybe proper historians rue the day he got the cart blanch from the BBC to make these films and series and don't find them "academic" enough. And maybe his work is just a form of meta-parody art, but there's always something in these films to tickle your grey matter. Finally, if anyone's interested in a docu-fictional story about the British Empire's comeuppance in Afghanistan the I'd recommend the first book in George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman" series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_(novel)