Pompeii: Time’s Up With Tom Hiddleston Review – you’ll be too disappointed to turn to cheese | Television

Tthere’s a fine line between “cheesy” and “cringe”, right? Come, walk with me and Tom Hiddleston in Pompeii: Time’s Up With Tom Hiddleston. Let’s see how many of us will survive the blast of shame that comes our way!

This is a National Geographic drama, which means that even the facts are written in imagination and there are CGI costs and reworked voice parts. And there is Tom (he has looked me deeply in the eyes in all three episodes, so I feel that we are in a familiar voice now), mixing the feeling of each moment with the restless passion of a born actor.

We begin! Incredibly! It’s Tom! Telling us – in a strangely tongue-in-cheek way – that Pompeii was destroyed in “one of the most tragic days in the world”. Then he lowers his voice. And he explains that even though the day is not long, it means that there is hope for everyone to be saved. He looks deeply into my eyes, into your eyes, into all eyes, into the eyes of the unborn, with the words: “Day. Chance.”

You’ve been Hiddlestoned. While you’re recovering, open the credits roll.

When the proper program starts, a normal Tom greets us. He assures us that we know very well that he went to Pompeii with two friends in 1998, at the age of 17. There are pictures to prove this! Tom is young and happy and just like us except tall and handsome and born ready for a career that combines a rewarding and high quality career! Pompeii, he tells us with our eyes, inspired him to learn Latin, to study classics at an unnamed university and to “restore the people”. Crikey. I’m lucky he didn’t just go to Ibiza for a month. His life and the history of British exports could have been very different.

Tom meets Prof Steven L Tuck, head of the Pompeii Survivors’ Project and is labeled on the screen as “Helpful Classicist”, which, other experts have also been known as “Helpful Archaeologist”, “Helpful Geoscientist” and so on, I am very happy. They are there to help Tom find three Pompeians whose stories can be traced back to that fateful day in AD79 when Mount Vesuvius began dropping tons of rock and magma beneath the defenseless towns.

Prof Tuck shows Tom the ancient manuscripts and manuscripts and Tom, who has Latin, translates. The first person he finds is a young man named Lucius Avianius (which, if my Latin doesn’t fail me, translates to “Lucy Birdyus”). Tom looks – no, of course! – deep thoughts. “If I’m going to tell the story of Avianius,” he says at last, raising his living eyes to our eyes, “I have to connect the evidence of history with what I do as an actor. I want “- words drop, eyes soulfuller – “to walk beside him, on the streets in his shoes.” The Romans had the same word for “history” and “history”, he says. “Evidence is opinion mixed,” he continues to wiggle his fingers together they are afraid.

The second person to survive is the owner of the bath house named Julia – after misreading Tom at first as “Julius”. Oh, Tom! But one scholar explains that women had property and power in the old days and that Julia did this because of the shame they felt towards her. This causes Tom to sigh in pity and admiration and call her “Impossible Julia”. At this point, I find myself shaking so much that I almost turn to cheese, which is an unexpected but not unpleasant experience.

Along the way, Tom consults a range of experts, including a psychologist, who explain why people don’t literally or figuratively run for the hills at the first sign of trouble but might try to find, say, a family first. “Yes,” breathes Tom. “It’s the one you can go to. It’s the one I can go to.” Sadly I am writing a note in the “cringe” section.

Tom is very happy with Pliny, he stands aside graciously to re-examine the ash and pumice display, and hopes to succeed in the rescue operation launched by the Roman fleet from the Bay of Naples. However, from time to time he succumbs to the thought of suffering that is happening throughout the day when the full power of the mountain erupts. Born players are easily beaten. But they are very brave. They are in the army until the agreement is reached and money is no doubt the reason.

I guess I have to look back on my first play starring a born actor and claim that I was entertained but tired of the constant anticipation that seems to fall into disrepute for all concerned. But if I were younger, less cynical, a better person in every way, I would love it and it would make me more interested in the old world. The deal is done.