TraumaZone

I’m so glad Adam Curtis is there. for years on end we hear nothing about him, but then he resurfaces with the latest piece of intelligent television, doing something that’s very different from what’s normally served up, but which will stimulate and provoke in a way that is all too rare.

I remember previous series on advertising and politics, but nothing prepared me for the latest - TraumaZone. This is a seven-hour (yes, you heard that right: seven episodes, one hour each) series about the recent history of Russia, showing what it was like to live through the collapse of communism and democracy in the Soviet Union. And it’s all old footage. Mostly from BBC camera operators, sometimes reporting on very mundane, everyday stuff.

It jumps around between different parts of Russia, from important political events to trivial routine to comic, eccentric stuff that you can hardly believe, but the editing is brilliant. It’s not dull, it’s quick moving, and it has some really witty juxtaposition of material that seems unrelated but turns out not to be. There’s no spoken commentary, but there’s some simple, devastating captions which make sure that you get the point of what’s going on. And the long-term point is how grim it was for most Russians to be alive at this time, and how plausible it seemed that Putin might be offering a route out of despair, after the chaos of what preceded him.

We watch Yeltsin move from being the heroic saviour of free Russia to being a drunken fool, and it’s all there in the footage. He must have sat though hours and hours of really boring stuff to come up with this tantalising selection of snippets, but it’s brilliant to watch.