Timewatch: The History of a Mystery
BBC 2 (InVision Productions), 17 September 1996
Written and Directed by William Cran

Featured Antoine Captier, Claire Corbu, Gérard de Sède, Robert McCrum, Paul Schellenberger, Richard Andrews, Professor Martin Kemp, Pierre Jarnac, John Hamill, Jean-Luc Chaumeil (with archive footage of Henry Lincoln, Professor Christopher Cornford and Pierre Plantard)

In Search of History: The Holy Grail
The History Channel (FilmRoos, Inc; A & E Television Networks), December 1997
Executive Producer Bram Roos
Produced by Truusje Rushner

Featured Norris J Lacy, Bonnie Wheeler, Caitlin Matthews, John Matthews, Laurence Gardner

*A revised version of the documentary The Quest for the Holy Grail, being part of The History Channel's Ancient Mysteries series, shown in August 1997.

In Search of The Holy Grail
The Learning Channel/Discovery Communications/New York Times (Bluebook Films), 18 February 2003
Produced and Directed by Bruce Burgess

Featured Simon Kirk, Michael Blackburn, Dr Juliette Wood, Gerald Morgan, Andrew Sinclair, Michael Orchard, Michael Baigent, Canon Jaime Sancho

Legend Hunters: The Holy Grail - the real story (Pilot Episode)
Discovery: Travel Channel US (Partners In Motion), 11 April 2003
Producer: Paul Compton
Executive Producer: Ron Goetz

Featured Stephen Moore, PhD., Henry Lincoln; Michael Stokes, John Brunsdon, MBE; Andrew Collins; Graham Phillips; Rosemary Arscott; Steve Mizrach, PhD

Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci
ABC News Productions, 3 November 2003
Directed by Rudy Bednar, Presented and Written by Elizabeth Vargas

Featured Dan Brown; Father Richard McBrien, PhD; Professor Elaine Pagels, PhD; Darrell L Bock, PhD; D Jeffrey Bingham, PhD; Professor Karen King, PhD; Margaret Starbird; Jack Wasserman, PhD; Carlo Pedretti, PhD; Henry Lincoln; Niven Sinclair; Andrew Sinclair; Umberto Eco; Rev Robin Griffith-Jones, PhD.

Investigating History: The Holy Grail
The History Channel (Kurtis Productions Ltd), 26 April 2004
Produced by Sharon Barrett, Presented by Bill Kurtis

Featured Michael Baigent; Professor Malcolm Barber; Dr Robert Eisenman; Dr Barbara Frale; uncredited contribution from an individual who claimed that Flying Saucers visited the village of Rennes-le-Château.

Behind The Mysteries: Unlocking Da Vinci's Code - The Full Story
(updated version of the ABC documentary above)
The National Geographic Channel (ABC News Productions), 19 December 2004
Produced by Jean Marie Condon and Yael Lavie, Presented and Written by Elizabeth Vargas

Featured Dan Brown; Ellen McBreen, PhD; Darrell L Bock, PhD; Father Richard P McBrien; Paul L Maier, PhD; Professor Elaine Pagels, PhD; Jeffrey Bingham, PhD; Professor Karen King, PhD; Margaret Starbird; Rev Robin Griffith-Jones; Jack Wasserman, PhD; Carlo Pedretti, PhD; Henry Lincoln; Umberto Eco; Helen Nicholson; Dr Niven Sinclair; Andrew Sinclair; uncredited contributions by various inhabitants from the village of Rennes-le-Château and the town of Saintes-Maries de la Mer.

Beyond The Da Vinci Code
The History Channel (Weller/Grossman Productions in association with Paulist Productions), 16 January 2005
Directed by Will Ehbrecht

Featured Richard Leigh; Dr Karen Ralls; Timothy Freke; Dan Burstein; Dr George Gorse; Margaret Starbird; Dr Deirdre Good; Jean-Luc Chaumeil; Andrew Soane.

The Real Da Vinci Code
Channel Four Television (Wildfire Television), 3 February 2005
Produced by Simon Raikes, Presented by Tony Robinson

Featured Professor Oliver Davies; Graham Phillips; Dr Juliette Wood; Richard Barber; Canon Jaime Sancho; Dr Thomas Asbridge; Michael Baigent; Jonathan Sumption, QC; Dr Gabriel Barkav; Dr Helen Nicholson; Robert Brydon; Dr Andrew Sinclair; Stuart Beattie; Robert Cooper; Jean-Luc Chaumeil; Arnaud de Sede; Father Thierry Vregil; Michel Rouge; Charles Nicholl; Professor Elaine Pagels, PhD; Dr Ann Graham Brock; Margaret Starbird, uncredited contributions by various inhabitants from the town of Saintes-Maries de la Mer (with archive footage of Dan Brown, Henry Lincoln, Pierre Plantard).

Conspiracies On Trial: The Da Vinci Code
The Discovery Channel (Outline Productions), 10 April 2005
Directed by Harry Beney

Featured Sister Wendy Beckett; Rabbi Jonathan Romain; Dr Edward Adams; Professor Paul Fouracre; Professor John Gordon; Jean-Luc Chaumeil; Michael Baigent (cameo appearance only).

Secrets To The Code
Dateline: NBC (NBC Universal, Inc), 13 April 2005
Broadcast Producer Elizabeth Cole, Presented by Stone Phillips

Featured Father Thomas Williams; Professor Bart D Ehrman, PhD; Professor Karen King, PhD; Professor Ben Witherington, III, PhD; Darrell L Bock, PhD; Professor Elaine Pagels, PhD; Margaret Starbird; Professor David Nolta, PhD; Richard Leigh; Henry Lincoln; Bill Putnam (with archive footage of Pierre Plantard from 1979).

The Grail Trail: In Pursuit of The Da Vinci Code
ITV (Granada), 26 September 2005
Produced and Directed by Matt Cain
Executive Producer: Gillian Greenwood
Narrated by Caroline Quentin

Featured psychologist Dr Raj Persaud; Leah Ganpatsingh, Philip Lindholm & Neil O'Neil; Lynn Picknett; Professor Ronald Hutton; Charles Nicholl; Father John Wauck; Nigel Bryant

Da Vinci Declassified
The Learning Channel (Beantown Productions, Discovery Communications, Inc), 3 November 2005
Executive Producers: David Carr; David Comtois
Producer, Frankie Glass

Featured Dr Steven Mizrach, Lynn Picknett, David Barrett, Henry Lincoln, Clive Prince, Jessica Teisch, Ph.D., Heather Sexton, Craig Dickens, Dan Duling, Sharan Newman, Professor Arthur Benjamin, John Edwin Wood, Bill Putnam, Peter Caine, Michel Rouge, Stuart Beattie, Robert Brydon

Revealed... The Da Vinci Code Myth
Channel Five (Weller/Grossman Productions; Love Productions), 29 November 2005
Director/Senior Editor Will Ehbrecht
Narrated by Mark Halliley

Featured Lynn Picknett, Lindsay Johns, Dr Deirdre Good, Dan Burstein, Margaret Starbird, Maxwell Hutchinson, Timothy Freke, Dr Karen Ralls, Richard Leigh, Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Brian Sewell

* This documentary was an updated version of Beyond The Da Vinci Code as shown by The History Channel on 16 January 2005 cited above, using much of the original footage.

The Templar Code (“Decoding the Past” series)
The History Channel (Windworks Media Group, Inc)
Shown in two parts (Crusade of Secrecy and The Quest For Templar Treasure) on 7 and 14 November, 2005
Directed by Geoffrey Nadeja
Narrated by Timothy Watson

Featured Sean Martin, George Smart, Dr Timothy Wallace-Murphy, Alan Butler, Marilyn Hopkins, Dr Karen Ralls

* Compendium of Templar fantasies with assorted historical facts thrown-in to try and make this documentary appear legitimate – Templars making a discovery in the Temple of Solomon, Templars worshipping a mysterious head, Templars and Rosslyn Chapel, Templars travelling to America, Templars and the Oak Island ‘Money Pit’ – it’s all there...

Legend Detectives: The Mystery of Rennes-le-Château
Discovery Channel (IPM TV Ltd), 9 December 2005
Produced and Directed by Michael Hutchinson

Featured Ronald Top, Tessa Dunlop, Massimo Polidoro, Tony Stockwell, Claire Corbu, Jean-Claude de Brou, Antoine Captier, Maitre André Salaün, Laurent Bucholtzer, André Douzet, Professor Robert Eisenman

Opus Dei & The Da Vinci Code
Channel Four Television (CTVC), 12 December 2005
Produced and Directed by Jeremy Jeffs
Written and Presented by Mark Dowd

Featured Bobby Boone, Silas Agbim, Lynn Frank, John Allen, Jack Valero, Paul Nagy, Benedicte Nagy, Adrienne Treleaven, Eileen Cole, Mgr Vladimir Felzmann, Mgr Flavio Capucci, Tammy DiNicola, Dianne DiNicola, Art Thelan, Brian Parker, Father Gerard Sheehan, Father Ian Dickie, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Kenneth L Woodward (with archive footage of Jose Maria Escriva)

Terra X: Geheimakte Sakrileg – Der Mythos von Rennes-le-Château
ZDF (ifage-Filmproduktion GmbH), 15 January 2006
Directed by Georg Graffe

Featured Jean-Luc Chaumeil; Henry Lincoln; Dr Jan Rüdiger; Antoine Captier; Claire Corbu; Jean-Jacques Bedu

The Secret Bible: Knights Templar - Warriors of God
National Geographic Channel (Morningstar Entertainment), 22 February 2006
Directed by Michael S. Ojdea
Executive Producers Gary Tarpinian, Paninee Theeranuntawat
Narrated by Enn Reitel

Featured Timothy Wallace-Murphy, Larissa Tracy, Jill N. Claster, James Wasserman, Dr Karen Ralls, Reverend Robin Griffith-Jones, Stuart Beattie

* Semi historical, semi pseudo-historical treatment of the subject matter – representing a fusion of opposites being given equal consideration in the pursuit of “historical conjecture”.

* Amongst its catalogue of shortcomings, the documentary claimed that “beneath the ancient temple [of Jerusalem] folklore says the Knights made one of the most remarkable discoveries of all time” – when in fact this allegation was only first made by Louis Charpentier in his 1966 book, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral.

The Da Vinci Code – Bloodlines (“Digging for the Truth” series)
The History Channel (JWM Productions, LLC), 27 March 2006
Hosted by Josh Bernstein
Directed and Written by Brian Leckey

Featured Alice Jouve, Tuvia Fogel, Timothy Wallace-Murphy, Professor Jean-Jacques Cassiman, Daniel Perrier, Kent Dobson, Archbishop Malki Murad

* This documentary did a DNA testing on the remains of a 1,400 year-old Merovingian Queen (Aregund, the wife of Clothar I), which failed to produce any near-Eastern origin.

Da Vinci's Code ("Is It Real?" series)
National Geographic Television & Film Production, 24 April 2006
Written and Produced by Amy Doyle
Narrated by Will Lyman

Featuring Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Tammy DiNicola, Professor Martin Kemp, Richard Leigh, Sharan Newman, Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince, Father William Stetson, Tracy Twyman

The Secret of the Priory of Sion
CBS News '60 Minutes' (CBS Worldwide Inc.), 30 April 2006
Presented by CBS Correspondent Ed Bradley
Produced By Jeanne Langley

Featured Henry Lincoln, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Claude Charlot, Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood, Jean-Luc Chaumeil

* Dan Brown declined an invitation to appear on the documentary

The Da Vinci Code – The Greatest Story Ever Sold (‘Time Shift’ series)
BBC Four (BBC Bristol), 1 May 2006
Directed by Matthew Pelly; Producer Georgina Harvey
Narrated by Michael Pennington

Featured Richard Leigh; Jonathan Riley-Smith (Ecclesiastical Historian, Cambridge); David Aaronovitch (Columnist, The Guardian); Jack Valero (Opus Dei UK Director); Ruth Gledhill (Religion Correspondent, The Times); Evelyn Welch (Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary); James McConnachie; Robin Griffith-Jones (Master of the Temple, Temple Church, London); Brian Sewell (Art critic, The Evening Standard); Fred Piper (Professor of Mathematics, Royal Holloway); Sarah Dunant (Historical Novelist); Mike West (Chancellor, Lincoln Cathedral), with uncredited filmed contributions from a female Wiccan and assorted readers of The Da Vinci Code.

* Included extract footage from various past BBC documentaries (from the 1970s Chronicle documentaries, from the 1982 Omnibus, from the 1996 Timewatch documentary The History of a Mystery, from the February 2006 Culture Show, etc)

* Excellent documentary sending-up the modern day highly-fashionable beliefs in bogus secret societies, bogus hidden codes concealed in works of classical art and the bogus beliefs in the “descendants of Jesus Christ” which in turn have produced distorted and off-set interpretations of the Mediaeval literary creation The Holy Grail – all of which have crystallized due to the sudden and overwhelming popularity of Dan Brown’s recent novel The Da Vinci Code, itself inspired by books like The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail (1982).

* Quoting David Aaronovitch: “I am older than the Priory of Sion”, and “One of the things I think is interesting about this, is the way in which the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail have never, as far as I know, turned round to the rest of the world, and said, ‘It was a load of rubbish. Terribly sorry and all that. We are not going to give the money back cos we’ve spent it all and we did do quite a lot of work and we were hoaxed too, but actually, it’s all complete and utter tosh’.”

* Quoting Jonathan Riley-Smith: “What Holy Blood, Holy Grail, did, was to dismiss reputable evidence which didn’t go with its theories. Accept disreputable evidence and fill in the gaps where there was no evidence at all.”

Did Jesus Die?
BBC Four (Planet Wild), 1 May 2006
Written and Produced by Richard Denton
Narrated by Bernard Hill

Featured Elaine Pagels, Peter Stanford, John Dominic Crossan, Paula Fredericksen, Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Tom Wright, Thierry LaCombe, Richard Andrews, James Tabor, Steve Mason, Abdullah Assiz Kashmiri

* A real shocker of a documentary giving historical credence to claims like Jesus Christ surviving the crucifixion and travelling to either Southern France or to Kashmir; with Thomas the Apostle travelling to India; the region of Rennes-le-Château was described as a “place of mysteries” and a “stronghold of the Templars”, who in turn “possibly discovered great treasures in Jerusalem which created the legend that they discovered the bones of Jesus Christ” – it was also stated quite funnily that “Bérenger Saunière claimed to have found ancient documents and took his secret to the grave with him when he died in 1917”.

* This documentary is possibly the worst of its kind since the broadcasting during the 1970s of the American television series “In Search Of...” (presented by Leonard Nimoy).

Revealed... The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code
Channel Five Television (Diverse Productions Ltd), 10 May 2006
Produced and Directed by Ian Bremner
Narrated by John Shrapnel

Featured Henry Lincoln, Professor Brian Ford, Sharan Newman, Dr Helen Nicholson, John Edwin Wood, Erling Haagensen, Dr Jim Bennett, Ed Danson, Peter Barber (with archive footage of Professor Christopher Cornford)

* Documentary primarily made for escapist entertainment rather than for historical elucidation – shameless vehicle for books like The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and The Templars' Secret Island.....

* Repeated on 10 May 2009 when the movie The Da Vinci Code (2006) premiered on UK Television on Channel 5.

Angels & Demons – The True Story
Channel Five Television (Hidden Treasures Production; Love Productions), 10 May 2006
Produced and Directed by Stephen Franklin
Narrated by Paul McGann

Featured Dr Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Mark Irving, Simon Cox, Dan Burstein, George Lechner, Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lindsay Johns, James Wasserman, Dr Michael Barkun, Peter Sandford, Dr Amy Bernstein, Greg Tobin, Dr Antonio Sennis

Richard Hammond and The Holy Grail
BBC One (BBC), 29 May 2006
Produced and Directed by James Hayes
Presented by Richard Hammond

Featured Dr Tom Asbridge, Reverend Robin Griffith-Jones, Ian Robertson, Geoffrey Ashe, Richard Barber, Simon Cox, Stephen O’Shea, Karen McDermott, Father Gerald O’Collins; uncredited contributions from an American psychic in Rosslyn Chapel and various individuals at Glastonbury

* This poorly made superficial documentary got it right about the Grail being a medieval literary creation – and that Rosslyn Chapel had nothing to do with the Knights Templar – but the rest of the documentary was the product of sloppy third-rate research – presenting sensational claims found in pseudo historical books in a virtually uncritical manner – like the fact that the source of Abbé Bérenger Saunière’s wealth through the selling of masses was a “theory” on the same level as his “discovering a treasure”!

Da Vinci: Seeking The Truth
Time Warner Cable (Contenuti Productions & Media/Rai Trade), 2 October 2006 (DVD released on 9 May 2006 as The Da Vinci Project)
Directed by Luigi Rizza

Featured Professor Mariano Bizzarri, Professor Roberto Giacobbo, Michael Baigent, Professor Mario Moiraghi, Doctor Alessandro Vezzosi

Decoding Da Vinci (originally shown in May on More4)
Channel Four Television (Wildfire Television)
Executive Producer Philip Clarke
Series Producer Simon Raikes

Programme 1 – Secret Societies; 8 October 2006
Produced & Directed by Clare Slessor
Presented by Dan Rivers

Featured Alan Gilbert (presenter's Grandfather); Chris Mullin MP; Dr Robert Lomas; Ben Acheson; Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith; Elie de Comminges; Robin Ramsay; Lord Healey of Riddlesden; Professor Peter Kinderman

Programme 2 – The Sacred Feminine; 15 October 2006
Produced & Directed by Helen Williamson
Presented by Dan Rivers

Featured Elaine Pagels; Geri Parlby; Margaret Knight; Professor Salima Ikram; Professor Melissa Raphael; Rabbi Jonathan Romain; Dr Ananya Kabir; Dr Ahmed Al-Dubayan; Dr Reza Shah Kazeemi; Christina Oakley-Harrington; Jules Cashford

Programme 3 – Codes and Symbols; 22 October 2006
Produced & Directed by Nick Gillam-Smith
Presented by Dan Rivers

Featured Dr Joan Readman; Richard Kemp; Professor Joseph Koerner; Dr Louise Govier; Rabbi Larry Tabick; Dr Keith Martin; Clare Asquith; Madame Dorine Vitrouve; Stuart Mitchell; Professor Murray Campbell; Dr Philip Ball

The Family of Jesus
CTVC Production for Channel Four, 25 December 2006
Produced & Directed by David Batty

Presented by Dr Robert Beckford (Oxford Brookes University), who tried to reveal the original message of Christianity that involved Mary Magdalene, John The Baptist, and the immediate members of the family that shared the original bloodline of Jesus Christ – "this is the conspiracy that Dan Brown missed, more significant than The Da Vinci Code, it’s a story that has been hidden for more than two thousand years – it goes right back to the very beginnings of Christianity and if true, could rock everything that Christians believe in".

Featured Dr Esther de Boer (author, The Mary Magdalene Cover Up); Mother Catherine (Russian Orthodox Nun); Father Stefano de Luca (Franciscan Monk); Dr Helen Bond (Edinburgh University); Father Nicolai Spiro (Greek Orthodox Church); Archbishop Abba Melchizedek (Ethiopian Church); Father Lawrence (Guardian of The Milk Grotto); Issa Khoury-Jaraisy (Shop Keeper); Professor Richard Bauckham (St Andrews University); Aviram Oshri (Archaeologist); Father Saleh (Greek Orthodox Church); Dr. Mordechai Aviam (Director of Archeological Research at the Institute of Galilean Archeology); Professor James Tabor (author, The Jesus Dynasty); Father Eugenio Alliata (Franciscan Monk); Dr Shimon Gibson (The Cave of John the Baptist); Professor Ronny Reich (University of Haifa); Dr Raffaella Giuliani (Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology); Reverend Dean Bechard (Pontifical Biblical Institute); Ignatius Zakkai Iwas (Patriarch of Syriac Orthodox Church); Archbishop Aristarchos (Greek Orthodox Patriarchate)

* The claims and theories that were presented in this particular documentary are nothing new – that James the Just was the literal blood brother of Jesus Christ and that the earliest Christians were the members of Jesus Christ’s immediate family that flourished up to the third century were mooted in the 1980s four-part Channel Four television series Jesus: The Evidence, for example.

The Mystery Da Vinci
Channel Five (FulcrumTV/Discovery Communications Inc), 27 December 2006
Produced and Directed by Lisa Sabina Harvey
Narrated by Stephen Rashbrook

*Da Vinci's Lost Code was aired by the Discovery Channel on 14 May 2006 and narrated by David Soul.

Featured Robert Bolleurs; Richard Feigen; Professor Elizabeth Pilliod; Marcus Mazure; Dr Celia Frosinini; Richard Dorment; David Bull; Dr Nicholas Eastaugh; Professor Martin Kemp; Charles Nicholl; Professor Evelyn Welch; Professor David Hemsoll; Dr Matthew C. Steenberg; Professor Elaine Pagels; Dr Mario Taddei; Dr Karen Kirkby; Javier Sierra; Marta Paraventi

* The part of this documentary that covered the authentication of a lost painting to Leonardo Da Vinci and the discovery of its original design – "The Holy Infants" – representing a meeting between the infants Jesus Christ and John the Baptist kissing, taken from the Apocrypha – and depicted by many other different artists – was highly interesting and worth watching. The part of this documentary that involved the interpretation of the painting sadly degenerated into worthless conspiracy theorising on The Da Vinci Code level – the theme of Leonardo's painting was judged by the documentary-makers to be a "deeply heretical message" involving John the Baptist and Gnosticism – and Leonardo's decision to execute this painting involved his interest in the "unorthodox" origins of Christianity! The documentary-makers were good enough to include Professor Martin Kemp's verdict towards the end of the programme: "The Gnostic interpretation of 'The Holy Babies’ is to put it bluntly nonsense – there is no evidence that Leonardo had any interest in Gnostic doctrine at all – and indeed everything we know about Leonardo suggests he would have been deeply unsympatheric to them".

The Lost Tomb of Jesus
The Discovery Channel (VisionTV & Channel 4), 4 March 2007
Directed by Simcha Jacobovici
Produced by Ric Esther Bienstock, Felix Golubev & Simcha Jacobovici
Executive Producer, James Cameron
Narrated by Ron White
Presented by Simcha Jacobovici

Featured Ouriel Maoz, Rivka Maoz, Dr Shimon Gibson, Professor Tal Ilan, Professor James Tabor, Frank Moore Cross, John Dominic Crossac, Na'ama Vilozny, Professor Amos Kloner, David Mevorah, Professor Andrey Feuerverger, Bill Tarant, Professor François Bovon, Dr Stephen Pfann, Steven J. Cox, Dr Carney Matheson, Efraym Shochat, Oded Golan, Dr Charles Pellegrino, Robert E Genna

* The Talpiot tomb was first discovered in 1980 and featured on a television documentary for the BBC Heart of the Matter religious television series on Easter Sunday in 1996, and was dismissed by scholars as possibly containing the remains of Jesus Christ and his family. This documentary has evidently jumped onto The Da Vinci Code bandwagon, and its conclusions have been rejected by Joe Zias, former curator of archeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority and Professor Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the Talpiot tomb in 1980.

Bloodline
Cinema Libre Studio, 9 May 2008 (DVD released on 20 July 2008)
Written, Directed and Narrated by Bruce Burgess
Executive Producers: William Billingsley, René Barnett, Bruce Burgess
Edited by Daniel E. Brown

Featured Margaret Starbird; Tracy Twyman; Robert Howells; Guy Patton; Gino Sandri; Tim Wallace-Murphy; Dr. Steve Mizrach (telephone voice); Nicolas Haywood; Jean-François Lhuillier (the then Mayor of Rennes-le-Château); Alain Feral; Gerard Thom; “Ben Hammott” (Bill Wilkinson); Sandra Hamblett; Bill Kersey; Dr. Gabriel Barkay (Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem); Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe; Aidan Dodson (University of Bristol); Prof. Robert Eisenman (California State University); Rt. Rev John Shelby Spong, D.D (Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark (Ret.); "Anonymous Vatican contact" (telephone voice))

*Assortment of pseudo-historical claims, hoax treasure discoveries and motley charlatans. Totally uncritical “documentary” giving the doubt to the extremely ludicrous.

Secrets of the Jesus Tomb
Channel Five Television (CTVC), 2 September 2008
Directed by Sean Smith
‘Secrets of the Cross’ Series Producer John Fothergill
Narrated by Colin Tierney

Featured Professor Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina); Dr Shimon Gibson (W.F. Albright Institute, Jerusalem); Professor Amos Kloner (Bar-Ilan University, Israel); Professor James D. Tabor (Author: ‘Jesus Family Dynasty’); David Horovitz (Editor, The Jerusalem Post); Professor Jonathan Price (Tel Aviv University); Dr Carney Matheson (Lakehead University, Canada); Professor Tal Ilan (Freie University, Berlin); Dr Camil Fuchs (Tel Aviv University)

* Excellent documentary about the 1980 Talpiot Tomb discovery – first devoting a considerable amount of time to the recently generated conspiracy theory, before towards the end providing a more sober conclusion, emphasising a more realistic interpretation to this archaeological discovery. Repeated on 27 December 2008.

Mary Magdalene – Saint or Sinner?
Channel Five Television (CTVC), 21 September 2008
Written and Directed by Martin Kemp
‘Secrets of the Cross’ Series Producer John Fothergill
Narrated by Colin Tierney

Featured Professor James D. Tabor; Mother Catherine (St Mary Magdalene Convent); Dr Esther de Boer; Professor Bart Ehrman; Dr Samantha Riches (Cultural Historian, Lancaster University); Professor Tal Ilan (Institute for Jewish Studies, Freie University, Berlin); Stephen Langfur (Writer and Guide); Dr Rami Arav (Archaeologist, University of Nebraska); Veronique Flayol (Secretary, L’Association Santo Madeleno); Monseigneur Jean-Pierre Ravotti (Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume); Brother Thomas Michelet (Couvent des Dominicains); Yotam Tepper (Archaeologist, IAA)

The Nativity Decoded
Carbon for Channel Four Television, 25 December 2008
Written and Produced by Mike Smith
Presented by Dr Robert Beckford

Featured Vincent Nichols (Archbishop of Birmingham); Helen Bond (Edinburgh University); James Tabor (University of North Carolina); Dr Richard Chartres (Bishop of London); A. N. Wilson (Author, Jesus: A Life); Geza Vermes (Author, The Nativity: History & Legend); Shimon Gibson (Archaeologist); Richard Burridge (Dean of King's College London); Israel Knohl (Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Marianne Sawicki (Author, Crossing Galilee); Abdal Hakim Murad (Muslim Academic Trust); Tekleab Nigussie (Curator, Axum Museum); Sister Wendy Beckett (Art Historian); Father Justin (Librarian, St. Catherine's Monastery); Father Girgis (St George's Church, Heliopolis); Juliana Rahmatalla

*After repeating facts familiar to most researchers of Christian origins, Dr Robert Beckford proposed as a serious suggestion that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier named Ben Pantera (cited by Celsus and mentioned in 2nd century Jewish texts) in the town of Sepphoris, of which Jesus Christ became the offspring.