Cordoba might be one of the most interesting cities in Europe with a ver rich history. It's therefore quite an achievement to creat such a poor quality documentary on this city, it was literally hard to watch... The story that's being told here goes all over the place, it's totally unclear where the narrative is going, it seems like a stream of random facts and ancient buildings put together. Centre of the story is the 3d laser scanner device which is treated like some state of the art new hightech technology that will change everything we know and which is surely the future of modern archaeology. The device is shown constantly during the documentary even though it's in fact completely irrelevant and nothing new at all. Having studied archaeology over 20 years ago I have been using similar devices on dig sites. Obviously creating 3d models of these scans is easier now, but still nothing new and not something that gives us any information we already knew. It gets boring really quickly in the documentary to keep seeing this scanning device being treated like a make-believe holy grail of modern archaeology. It's not.
Also incredibly annoying in this documentary is the synchronisation of voices. Instead of just using subtitles all the experts voices are dubbed with voice actors who do a really terrible job in bringing across the narrative. Bad accents, wrong emphasis and extremely dull, uninspiring long monologues in one tone have replaced what the original people said in Spanish with clearly much more enthusiasm and inspiration. Such a waste.
I love archaeology, I love roman history and I love the city of Cordoba. But this documentary was just a pain to watch.
