Pompeii Live

Dear documentary makers:

1. Watch The World At War. Learn.
2. Do not keep telling your viewers what will happen later in the program. If they care they'll watch it.
3. Do not repeat what your talking heads just said. We heard them the first time and they said it better too.
4. Do not show any given animation more than once.
5. If your program is too short with all the above padding removed, put more interesting or beautiful things in it.
6. Do not demonstrate how fragile cliffs are by breaking bits off the bottom. This will not end well.
7. Keep the presenter off the screen as much as possible. It's not about them, even in the unlikely event that they're as good as Laurence Olivier.
8. Enthusiasm is not a substitute for exposition. Your viewers have a full set of emotions of their own.

If you follow these rules then you might avoid turning well-preserved Roman cities into unwatchably crap television.