Sunday’s the night this weekend (Feb. 21) and I’ve got two shows, one about a mummy and his dad, and one about an alive dad and his family.
King Tut Unwrapped
Safety Rating: 3,000-year-old stiffs, but otherwise safe
Friendly Rating: All but the youngest viewers
Quality Rating: Really interesting with some decent story-telling
Discovery Channel, Part One Feb. 21, Part Two Feb. 22, both at 8 p.m.
Truth be told, the mummies were unwrapped a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean we know all that much about them. The reality was, way back in ancient Egypt, mummies were moved all over the place to keep grave robbers from stealing all the cool gold and stuff the Pharaohs had buried with them in an attempt to take it with them. Which is one of the reasons that finding the tomb of Tutankhamun intact in 1922 was so remarkable.
What’s even more remarkable is that we’re able to pull sufficient genetic material from these mummies to figure how who’s who and more importantly, who’s related to whom. And that is the basis of much of Sunday’s part of the program. Given that a whole lot of the action takes place in a lab – which does not provide the most fascinating visuals – director Brando Quilici did a phenomenal job making the show worth watching.
I have to give Dr. Zahi Hawass a lot of credit for his segments. He’s pretty personable and even though the special runs for two hours each night (Monday focuses more on what Tutankhamun died of), it moves pretty well.
Please keep in mind, part of my fascination with the Amarna period and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb has a lot to do with my love of the Amelia Peabody series of mysteries written by Elizabeth Peters, starting with Crocodile on the Sandbank and most recently with Tomb of the Golden Bird – which fictionalizes the discovery of Tut’s tomb by Howard Carter. (Please note that you can support this blog by clicking on the Amazon.com ad to the left of this column to buy either of the above books.)
The Family Crews
Safety Rating: Mostly safe, but you may want to monitor just in case
Friendly Rating: Probably okay for all ages
Quality Rating: Not bad for a reality show
BET on Sunday (Feb. 21) at 9 p.m.
Get this – when actor and former football player Terry Crews played Julius (dad on one of my faves, Everybody Hates Chris), he was apparently coming from a very real place. He’s a father of five kids and has been married to Rebecca for 20-odd years and the show is about his life.
While it doesn’t happen in the first episode, the eldest daughter does get pregnant, but since she’s 22, it’s not quite the same issue as if she’d been still in high school. But that seems to be the worst of it, safety-wise. Given that this is on BET, I wouldn’t bet on it staying that way, but ya never know.
Another thing working in the show’s favor is that it’s only a half-hour long. Crews, being a basically decent human being who adores his wife and is enormously proud of his kids, is nonetheless, not the most exciting person on the planet (although he conceded at the press conference last January that it was a good thing the cameras were around when he found out his eldest was preggers).
How much of it is actually real, that’s always the question with these shows. That being said, I can assure you the episode about him and his family getting evacuated thanks to a brush fire is real. I know for a fact that it is because the Crews family lives in a gated community about a good half mile north of me and I remember that fire. We could see the flames on the hills from my living room window. And we ran into the show’s crew in our church’s parking lot that Sunday. Not to mention that several friends of ours who live in the same gated community as Crews were also evacuated.
I’m sure once the producers realized there was minimal property damage (and none in that gated community) and no loss of life, they were doing a major happy dance. Talk about great visuals – heck, even as far back from the flames as we were, I could see the planes flying into the smoke and gasped at the immediacy of it all.
Admittedly, if the show ends up on our personal DVR, it’s as much about the fire footage as anything. But it’s not a bad show and might provide some good conversation fodder.
I’d love to know if you agree or not, so please comment.
