TV review: The Normans, Norman Walks and Newlyweds: The First Year Itch

The Normans lacked sub-Enya musical accompaniments and reconstructions – thankfully
Professor Robert Bartlett
Professor Robert Bartlett . . . conveyed the strangeness and excitement of medieval history. Photograph: BBC

The north of England's first encounter with the Vikings was discombobulating, as we know from various appalled accounts from chronicling monks (people under 25: think of monks as very early bloggers, with a really, really slow internet connection). To a marauding Scandinavian, everyone looks like a big southern Jessie. Times, starting at Lindisfarne in 793, they were a-changing.

This is where The Normans (BBC2), medieval history professor Robert Bartlett's three-part series, began. A few minutes (and a century or so) later, Rollo the Walker was leading his Scandinavian buddies through Europe, raiding the Seine valley and picking out a nice spot in northern France where they could settle and – once King Charles had been subjugated – indulge a passion for nation- and Norman church-building.

Into this hard, cold, clever early medieval world was born William the Bastard, who would become William the Conqueror and have the terribly Gallic grace to do so in an easily memorisable year so that generations of even the most ill-educated of schoolchildren could have one date on which to hang the rags of their historical knowledge.

Edward the Confessor died without an heir and set the stage for a battle royale between W the B and Harold Godwinson, the richest man in England, a mighty general and someone with at least as good a claim to the English throne as William. But William was confident. He had, after all, the Pope and Halley's comet – a portent of great change to medieval folk.

The battle wasn't in Hastings, apparently, but a few miles away. I was glad, though, that the programme didn't go out of its way to debunk the best bit: the arrow through the eye that, as arrows through the eye tend to do, put paid to Harold's dreams of kingship (or anything else). Thanks, Pope. Thanks, Halley. England would never be the same again.

This was a splendid programme, plunking down facts firmly and stepping nimbly along them, while managing to convey all the strangeness and excitement of medieval history. There is something exotic yet primal about the distant past, and to suggest this without sacrificing information or deteriorating into a welter of reconstructions and sub-Enya musical accompaniments is an achievement that leaves you both punching the air with delight and weeping with gratitude.

Similar emotions are also aroused by the half-hour companion piece, Dan Snow's Norman Walks (BBC4), as he follows the routes travelled by William as he brought England to heel, but these are supplemented by an additional admiration for how well Snow blends into a rugged coastline, as well as a yearning to have him turned into an ambulant heritage site himself. Just a thought.

After the battle of (just outside) Hastings, William marched on London. He, Professor Bartlett and Dan "hewn from the living rock" Snow get there next week. I shall be waiting.

The most charitable and least depressing interpretation that can be given to Newlyweds: The First Year Itch (Channel 4) is that happiness, as they say, writes white. It was a follow-up to last year's documentary, whose makers limned the courtships and attended the weddings of 50 couples, and now return to see how they have fared. Only half a dozen couples were featured and it is to be hoped that this was because the other 44 were hopelessly, boringly, unwatchably content. Because otherwise, the evidence for marriage as anything other than a crucible for misery was overwhelming.

There was Sue, who had spent the year forgiving her groom for being too pissed to get through his vows. There was 50-year-old Roy and his young, exquisitely beautiful, degree-holding Thai bride Thip, who sobbed as she insisted she had made the right decision. Amet and Bhavita felt their arranged marriage was working: "I'd say we're in love now. In our own little way."

Civilly-partnered Hannah and Carol described the subsequent months as "an anti-climax" and still seemed to lack the self-acceptance they had clearly hoped the ceremony would provide. Two Christians, virgins pre-marriage, admitted that marriage was "quite tough". God knows what they'll do when the novelty of sex wears off. And Sarah and Graham had split after a few months. But, said Sarah, "I always say if you want something really bad, don't stop until you get it." She is now pregnant and back with Graham, the father. He gazed at the ultrasound with awe and around him with despair.

The hour was thick with the sound of unwilling compromise, disappointments, high hopes and low expectations equally unmet. Happy anniversary.