This week on Culture Vulture, Ryan dives into a TV and film lineup shaped by empire, reckoning, and the private costs of public life. From the ruins of Vesuvius to the fallout of modern politics, from tender kitchen romances to the spectacle of myth‑making, the week’s programmes ask a simple question: what stories survive us, and why?
We explore: • Rome as lived infrastructure — Mary Beard and Alice Roberts tracing power through roads, aqueducts, and ash. • The Tony Blair Story — a three‑part political autopsy on trust, certainty, and consequence. • The Taste of Things — cinema where cooking becomes a language of devotion. • Myth & violence — Bonnie and Clyde, Zulu Legend, Cape Fear and the stories we glamorise. • Institutional failure & testimony — from undercover policing to hospital histories.
Picks of the week: – The Tony Blair Story (for political biography lovers) – The Taste of Things (for slow‑cinema romantics) – Bonnie and Clyde (for late‑night mythmaking)
Want the full written breakdown by Pat Harrington, including all programme times? 👉 Read it here: https://countercultureuk.com/2026/02/13/counter-culture-14th-20th-february-2026/
Full podcast script
Hello, this is Culture Vulture. I’m Ryan. This episode follows a week of television and film that keeps returning to empire, reckoning, and the private costs of public life. The selections move from the ruins of Vesuvius to the fallout of modern politics, from intimate kitchen romances to the moral ambiguity of espionage — a schedule that asks what stories survive us and why. The programme listings and commentary I’m drawing on come from the Counter Culture schedule for 14–20 February 2026 written by Pat Harrington.
Rome, Empire, and Material Traces
Start with the programmes that treat empire as infrastructure rather than legend. Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome (back‑to‑back from 1:00pm, Saturday 14 February, PBS America) and The Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts (9:00pm, Saturday 14 February, Channel 4) both make empire tactile: aqueducts, roads, forums, and the scorched streets of Herculaneum become forensic records of power and collapse. These shows insist that empire is built by systems — bureaucracy, mobility, architecture — and that its failures leave material traces as well as political ones. The archaeology and the close reading of ruins turn history into a kind of moral geography, where who had space and who did not is part of the story.
Political Biography and Public Consequence
The week’s political centrepiece is The Tony Blair Story, a three‑part series that frames a premiership as both project and cautionary tale. Episode 1 “Who Are You?” airs 9:00pm, Saturday 14 February on BBC Two; Episode 2 “Iraq” is 9:00pm, Wednesday 18 February on BBC Two; Episode 3 “The Loss of Power” is 9:00pm, Thursday 19 February on Channel 4. The series traces how modernisation rhetoric, message discipline, and a narrowing of evidence can calcify into consequence. It’s television as autopsy: not merely scandal‑mongering but an examination of how institutional choices and rhetorical certainty can erode trust and produce long‑lasting harm.
Intimacy, Craft, and the Language of Food
As a counterpoint to the grand narratives, there’s a film that moves at the pace of a simmering pot. The Taste of Things airs 9:35pm, Saturday 14 February on BBC Four. Trần Anh Hùng’s film treats cooking as devotion: texture, silence, and ritual become a language of care. Where the political programmes map systems and consequences, this film maps the choreography of tenderness — how small gestures and repeated practice can hold a life together. It’s a reminder that intimacy is often a craft, and that cinema can register care through the smallest, most domestic acts.
Myth, Violence, and Media Spectacle
The schedule also asks how violence becomes myth. Bonnie and Clyde airs 11:00pm, Saturday 14 February on BBC Two; Zulu Legend screens 2:00pm, Saturday 14 February; and the classic revenge and spectacle of Cape Fear is 9:00pm, Sunday 15 February on Legend. These films show how media framing and public appetite can transform criminals into icons, or turn revenge into operatic spectacle. The programmes invite us to consider who benefits from the framing and what is lost when violence is aestheticised.
Institutional Failure, Trust, and Testimony
A recurring thread is institutional failure and its human cost. The schedule includes Storyville: “The Darkest Web” (10:00pm, Saturday 14 February, BBC Four), a documentary about undercover policing in encrypted online spaces, and Newsnight’s interview with Gisèle Pelicot (10:00pm, Sunday 15 February, BBC Two), which foregrounds testimony and the long shadow of institutional abuse. There’s also Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time (8:00pm, Wednesday 18 February, Channel 5) and the wartime hospital mystery Green for Danger (6:10pm, Friday 20 February, Talking Pictures). Together these programmes interrogate how systems meant to protect can fracture trust, and how individuals — victims, whistleblowers, or frontline workers — bear the consequences. The week balances spectacle with sober testimony, and that tension is what makes it compelling.
Picks for the Week
If you want a short list to guide your viewing:
Must watch: The Tony Blair Story — three episodes at 9:00pm on Saturday 14, Wednesday 18, and Thursday 19 February; essential for anyone interested in modern political biography and the mechanics of public trust.
Comfort and craft: The Taste of Things — 9:35pm, Saturday 14 February; slow cinema that treats food as a language of care.
Late‑night pick: Bonnie and Clyde — 11:00pm, Saturday 14 February; watch for the way cinema remakes myth.
This week’s schedule is a study in contrasts — tenderness and brutality, infrastructure and intimacy, public consequence and private longing. Whether you’re drawn to forensic history, political biography, or films that move at the pace of a simmering pot, there’s a thread here that will stay with you after the credits roll. Thanks for listening to Culture Vulture.
