In the 1998 NBA finals, the defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls played against Utah Jazz in a repeat of the previous year's Final. With Utah leading 86-85 and few seconds remaining of the definitive match, John Stockton passed the ball to Karl Malone but Jordan stole the ball away and dribbled down the court to hit a 20-footer to end the finals. Battered and exhausted, the Bulls conclude their 'Last Dance' with a sixth championship. Michael, Phil Jackson and others reflect on the end of the dynasty.
This second instalment looks at how Vladimir Putin arrived in the Kremlin as a vulnerable and unknown president, whom the Russian oligarchs expect to control. The programme reveals how he asserted his hold on power and ultimately surrounded himself with his KGB peers, as well as his philosophy as regards traitors and enemies. The film also examines the stories of businessman Boris Berezovsky and defector Alexander Litvinenko, who both stood up to Putin and wound up dead on British soil.
The second part of this series begins with his return home after his discharge from the army, and how he dealt with a rapidly changing pop scene. The picture is more complicated than even a fairly serious Elvis fan may understand. Priscilla Presley, who made some appearances in the first part, offers much more here, helping us understand how being forced into making a string of lousy movies was one kind of artistic prison, and then being ensconced in casino hotels for his famous Las Vegas residency was another. The man who had so carefully created his original persona was now stuck in the shallow roles others forced him to play.
Writing itself is 5,000 years old, and for most of that time words were written by hand using a variety of tools. The Romans were able to run an empire thanks to documents written on papyrus. Scroll books could be made quite cheaply and, as a result, ancient Rome had a thriving written culture. With the fall of the Roman Empire, papyrus became more difficult to obtain. Europeans were forced to turn to a much more expensive surface on which to write: Parchment. Medieval handwritten books could cost as much as a house, they also represent a limitation on literacy and scholarship. No such limitations were felt in China, where paper had been invented in the second century. Paper was the foundation of Chinese culture and power, and for centuries how to make it was kept secret. When the secret was out, paper mills soon sprang up across central Asia. The result was an intellectual flourishing known as the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars made discoveries in biology, geology, astronomy and mathematics. By contrast, Europe was an intellectual backwater. That changed with Gutenberg’s development of movable type printing. The letters of the Latin alphabet have very simple block-like shapes, which made it relatively simple to turn them into type pieces. When printers tried to use movable type to print Arabic texts, they found themselves hampered by the cursive nature of Arabic writing. The success of movable type printing in Europe led to a thousand-fold increase in the availability of information, which produced an explosion of ideas that led directly to the European Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that followed.
Mark has never had a girlfriend, but he wants love more than anything. Maddi and Mark are going on their second date at the Australian Museum. Olivia has had 'a bazillion' unrequited loves but is not ready to give up. Maddi dates a new man who impresses her with his musical talent.
On the second part of his journey through the dark ages Richard Rudgley continues into the age of the wandering peoples, the Volkerwanderung. These Northern people enjoyed a golden age unaffected by Rome and just 30 years after the Romans relinquished Britain, the 'Anglo-Saxons' made their move. The bedraggled legions are in retreat. Walls are pulled down. Mosaics shattered. And yet there never was a people called Anglo-Saxon. We look at the lasting influence of Saxon leaders like Alfred the Great, and his blue print for social justice.
Battered and exhausted, the Bulls conclude their 'Last Dance' with a sixth championship. Michael, Phil Jackson and others reflect on the end of the dynasty.