American twist

The press release about BBC Arts 2018, until recently under the jaunty hat of rakish Director Jonty Claypole, doesn't seem to have been issued via the command and control of the extensive BBC Media Centre.

So I'm catching up via other media sources. And thus shocked to learn that Civilisations, the re-invention of Kenneth Clarke's pioneering series from the late sixties, is to be narrated by a YANK.

Co-producers Nutopia and PBS have lighted upon San Francisco-born Liev Schreiber to add his chops to the script. And whilst the principal hosts are British - Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga - plenty of the other contributing sages are from the USA:  Jamal J. Elias, Religious Studies Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Rebecca Gonzalez-Lauck, National Institute for Anthropology, Mexico; Salima Ikram, Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo; Jay Xu, Director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and Maya Jasanoff, Professor of History at Harvard University.