Decoding the Past: The Templar Code: Parts 1 & 2 (2007)

The Sy-Fy Channel has a reputation for making bad (chee-ZEE!) sci-fi made-for-TV movies. The History Channel is building a reputation for making even worse (hoo-EE!) history documentaries. You know the kind: (1) Oblique mention of unsupported factoid. (2) “Could it be that [unsupported factoid] is the explanation for what really happened?” (3) Factual statements thereafter presenting the factoid as fact. Another exasperating aspect of this pair of 50-minute episodes is how they leave you with the distinct feeling that the whole show could have easily been covered in 50 minutes. The repetition in the script becomes obnoxious enough, but the reuse of dozens of play-acting scene snippets, dozens of times each, becomes ridiculous. (I wanted to build a list and keep tally: Hands counting out giant shiny coins, hands sliding a scroll in and out of a pottery jar, hands grubbing in loose soil and uncovering a clay chalice, three soldiers dressed in mail storming a Templar site and tossing around empty burlap sacks, a half-dozen generic torture scenarios, and so on.) Worst of all, the rumor mill just runs wild with this one. Perhaps the most you can glean will be the names of six historical figures, but the facts of their involvement are glossed over or twisted by baseless innuendo. Any documentary that leave you more confused about a topic after viewing it, has problems, and this one has them in spades. At least they didn’t harp on the Dan Brown brouhaha, really only mentioning his secondhand speculations obliquely and at the end. There are a number of better documentaries, not to mention Jeremy Renner’s upcoming Knightfall. See those first! 2 stars. (3-15-2016)