Down tomb valley – digging for King Tut

The story of the search for the tomb of Tutankhamun. Keep an eye out for enraged Ottomans who are hotly pursuing Indy Jones! Most reviews at the time of the 2017 ITV four-part miniseries were generously favorable. The cast is very talented and does a fabulous job given that the story line bears only a glancing relationship with history. But it does include a composite character, Maggie Lewis of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and thus, without the presence of Catherine Steadman, who plays this role, she would have been significantly worse off. By the way, Steadman played a role in Downton Abbey, which, in my view, has as strong a connection with the historical discovery of the tomb as the script. The Radio Times review is worth a read. So too is James Walton’s review in The Spectator, in which he describes Carter’s meeting with Sir Flinders Petrie as “here depicted as a more naked version of Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” But above all, watch the mini-series on Amazon Prime (Britbox if in the US).

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