Well, The Guardian was right, part 2 of the BBC’s Worlds of Fantasy series was much better than the first. Indeed, I’m almost moved to suggest that they were written by two different people, because the first program claimed that fantasy literature was invented in the 19th Century whereas this one traces it all the way back to Beowulf.

The program looks solely at Tolkien and Peake, which is a very reasonable thing to do, and it makes all of the usual arguments about the differing styles of the two men and their worlds, about the influence of the 20th Century’s great wars on their lives, and about their legacy in fantasy fiction today. I was pleased to see Tom Shippey get a chance to talk about Tolkien. Diana Wynne Jones (who apparently attended Tolkien’s classes at Oxford) gets interviewed in what looks like Wookey Hole. There are good contributions from China (again), from Joe Abercrombie (who looks like he’d make a great con panelist) and Joanne Harris. Toyah Wilcox also makes useful contributions, but my favorite guest slot came from John Sessions who playfully compares the House of Lords to Gormenghast.

All in all I’m now rather sad that I won’t get to see part 3. Hopefully someone out there will watch it and report on it.