Enough of murk and mumbling, let’s have TV we can see and hear

This time he plays the luckless Harold Godwinson, the man who lost to William the Conqueror at Hastings during 1066 and all that. Every schoolchild in Britain used to know that date, even Scottish ones, 1314 and all that was rarely discussed back in the day.

Most of the dialogue in King and Conqueror seems to have been recorded by microphones hidden under bushy moustaches and tapestries, says Susan Morrison (Picture: Lilja Jons/BBC)

The BBC has purchased a beast of a thing to plot the twists and turns of the Anglo-Norman conflict. A whole very expensive eight episodes. Would be nice, now and then, if we got some of that pricey production for Scottish history. Apparently, we only get to grace the screen if it includes racy sex scenes between James VI and his “favourite”, or features a bigamous time-travelling nurse with husbands in two centuries, one of which is prone to galloping about the Highlands shirtless. We have to be honest, Outlander is pretty inaccurate. No one North of the Caley Canal would dream of exposing that much flesh to the mercy of the midges.

King and Conqueror has no truck with time-travelling sloppiness. Accuracy is the name of the game here, right down to the incredibly cute wee ponies they ride about on. Money has been lavished on this epic tale, and so it would be really nice if we, the licence payers, could actually see what our cash bought. Beyond the cute ponies, that is.

Look, we all know that the 11th century was probably a bit grim. But they did have daylight. And yes, I bet that the interiors were a tad on the dark side, what with the lack of windows, blazing chimney-less fires and smoky, stinky tallow candles. Folks must have been staggering about in a constant fug. No wonder archaeologists keep digging up broken pottery. But this is the 21st century and we have technology that allows us to light scenes so that we can see what’s going on.

Matters aren’t helped by the facial hair arrangements. At one point I thought Chewbacca had strolled on set, but squinted at the screen and realised it was Harold’s dad doing a bit of roaring and drinking. He did this quite a lot. Well, there wasn’t that much to do in the 11th century. At least we could hear him. Most of the dialogue seems to have been recorded by microphones hidden under bushy moustaches and tapestries. There’s much mumbling and muttering, with the dialogue competing with massively intrusive “background” music blaring whenever someone jumped into the surf from a small boat, got murdered or during some light murdering and/or torturing.

Murk-viewing, mumble-speak and music-drown appear to rule the airwaves right now. Even youngsters of my acquaintance have begun to watch TV with the subtitles on, just because they can’t make out what anyone is saying. The state of the nation’s relationships are at stake here. Long married couples are reduced to shouting at each other “Who is this, now?” and “Did she just cut his hand off?”

We folded at the end of Episode 2. Pretty much know how it ends anyway. Check out the online Bayeux Tapestry. Makes more sense than the telly version. So, enough of the murk and mumble. Let’s have some TV we can see and hear.