In my personal opinion, any documentary that features Graham Hancock and is not specifically about wing nuts with wild theories, is not really a documentary: it’s a work of speculative fiction.

I’ve actually watched some of the Ancient Apocalypse but haven’t seen it through to the end yet so some of my criticisms could be unfair as they may be already addressed in the show itself.

They’re fairly entertaining, I kinda like it. Every episode starts with an interesting archeological site and a little bit of a rundown on the uncontroversial aspects of why it’s an interesting place. In this regard it’s quite a good travelogue show. There’s also a gradual step up from there to Hancock’s pet theory, the usual structure is a “here’s this interesting ancient place thought to be A, but what you probably didn’t know was that there’s probably a hidden or previously unknown aspect to it B and then the even wilder part is it’s all connected to this wider insane leap C”.

A is always good to learn, B is sometimes compelling such as when they think they have physical evidence of entire additional ancient structures underneath a visible one, though often very speculative and typically involve the site being older than experts believe. C is Hancock’s ridiculous theory about a very advanced civilization that died out but survivors of which went around the world spreading its greatest achievements to other societies at the time, which to line up with his timeline for when this advanced civilization fell requires most archeological discoveries to be older than currently thought. He’ll usually go in to comparative mythology as well with cool artwork that is implied to be historical but is quite clearly made for the show.

As I’ve said I like the show, but Graham Hancock does his best to make it hard to like by being such a grating self satisfied dickhead. I can see why if you’re an expert in the field it would be galling to see rampant speculation getting very popular and seriously received but I don’t think I’d have such a problem with it if Hancock didn’t go out of his way to talk about how much smarter he is than the “experts” and variously suggests that the reason they don’t like him or that they haven’t made the same amazing discovery as him is variously because they are conspiring to keep theories that don’t fit a narrative suppressed, are too lazy to do physically go and investigate places where there just certainly must be something amazing if only people would just go dig it up, or somehow, despite their clever and underhanded conspiring are just not clever enough to think of Hancock’s suggestions whilst also rejecting them out of hand.

This makes it a hard watch, he dedicates a lot of time to this, and even while doing so accuses experts of being “defensive” which is hilarious because if you’re going into this cold with an open mind to listen to what he has to say, the first thing you get is him being super defensive about why no one else believes his wacky theory, which would be a huge red flag if you were to try and assess whether he has any kind of a point or his theories have any merit until you realise that this is basically his shtick and how the show sets it’s tone. It doesn’t just want to be an “archeology” documentary, it wants to embrace Hancock’s outsider status to create in him a character for a more dramatic narrative. This is a good idea for making an exciting show but since it’s already on shaky ground be pretending to be a documentary it needed to be handled skillfully to really work in this way but instead they decided going completely over the top and bringing it up over and over again like the insecure kid in the plahground that always lies was the best way to execute it and thus squandered the dramatic potential. To give you an example, Joe Rogan is used as an interviewee to try and bolster Hancock’s credibility.

Again I haven’t watched all the episodes, so perhaps he’s building to something but to me the most glaring flaw in his theory, one not helped by the “everyone but me is such a dumbass for not noticing this stuff when the evidence is right in front of you” style is that he presents lots of different cases where he thinks an archeological site is built using advanced techniques or for advanced purposes that don’t line up with the prevailing understanding of the civilization that built it and therefore they must have had contact with people from his theoretical super civilization. Okay, but how is it that these societies have left traces of their existence all over the place including clues to their cobtact with this mystery society, but the benevolent super society itself didn’t directly leave a trace? I think he’s leading up to saying something about the ice age somehow destroying the evidence but that all seems a bit convenient. In any case it could be true but with the crucial evidence form such an extraordinary hypothesis apparently not present, it’s shaky ground from which to proclaim everyone else has no idea.