The Saint and the Hanged Man

I think this must be the state-of-the-art in contemporary feature making. A layered mix of animation, dramatisation, funky music, clever talking heads, whizzy video techniques and a fair amount of cheeky supposition. It’s all about the sanctification of a middle-ranking medieval bishop called Thomas Cantilupe and it involves the miraculous resurrection of a twice-hanged Welsh terrorist and a ‘trial’ making use of some very up-to-date investigatory methods. This sort of thing might well have Humphrey Jennings spinning in his grave (he is dead isn’t he?) but I’m really totally in favour of this kind of accessible and entertaining TV history. Thinking about it, it’s a bit like a kind of Horrible Histories for grown-ups. Nicely done.