Dimbleby's gimmick-free Battle of Hastings

What should a documentary want from a presenter? Professional expertise - a historian for history, a scientist for science? Celebrity - a big name to draw an audience to an otherwise hard-to-sell subject? Or a people person - someone who can get more from contributors than an unseen producer behind the camera?

Presenters can bring any or all of the above. But it's easy to forget a more basic requirement - the ability to communicate with an audience. 

There was a bravura example of that when the first episode of David Dimbleby's new Seven Ages of Britain series reached 1066. 

Countless history series have had a go at the Battle of Hastings, usually requiring their presenters to stride excitedly across the fields at Battle in Sussex, intercut with blurry bits of slow shutter-speed reconstruction and sounds of horses neighing, swords clashing etc.

Dimbleby (or his director) decided they didn't need all that when they had the Bayeux Tapestry and Dimbleby's own ability to tell the story.

Almost five straight minutes of a man with a 900-year-old piece of needlework for Sunday BBC1 primetime? With expert editing and use of music, for my money, nobody has brought the battle to life more vividly.