Britain's Lost Masterpieces BBC4

Wales last week; Scotland tonight.

It is a good watch, but I have some reservations. For instance, this week's episode featured an 'expert' on Allan Ramsay who, when presented with two near identical portraits side-by-side, was apparently unable to identify the more famous example which hangs in the NPG!

More generally, the programme repeatedly demonstrates the woeful standard of art history scholarship. In episode one, the contention that Jordaens' Meleager and Atalanta was painted in two stages 20 years apart could have easily been debunked years before simply by studying other Jordaens paintings of similar dimensions. Either the programme is slily taking credit where it is not due, or the so-called scholars are hopeless.

I'm just waiting for some of "Billy's" to turn up ...
William 'Billy' Mumford, 63, copied artists including Sayed Haider Raza, Welsh landscape painter Kyffin Williams and surrealist John Tunnard.

Northern Ireland tonight.

From the Radio Times:
Jacky Klein and Dr Bendor Grosvenor visit Belfast to take in the Ulster Museum, and assess what are thought to be low-value copies of works by Peter Breughel the Younger. They also head to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, where they view a controversial image. Said to depict William III and the Pope, the painting was once slashed with a knife, and is now kept in a room away from public view.

Indeed, but also becoming formulaic within just three editions: see painting; take to restorer/cleaner; research provenance; show to expert for revised opinion; return to gallery.

Not helped either by padding with other, entirely unrelated stories. (In this case, the few minutes on the unattributed pair of portraits of William and Mary).

It's a great idea for a series, but they'll need to find other angles to sustain the interest. A few failures needed too - they are yet to mention an instance where they failed to prove their original hypothesis. I wonder what their strike rate is?

Halfway through watching the second one of these. Really enjoying these programmes. They are very well presented, beautifully filmed and nice music.

I could watch this stuff all day, it's very relaxing.

Thanks for the link Poppydog. I will explore that later, it looks very interesting.