This is all very interesting – but, for all I am a helpless Curtis stan, from the films I’ve seen, the series is not without its problems. These problems stem largely from the fact that Curtis is, by his own admission,
‘fundamentally a historian’ – and that he is also, we must add, fundamentally a historian who isn’t really interested in economics. Curtis is brilliant when it comes to detailing developments in the superstructure – our culture, our institutions, our ideas and systems of power. But he is much less able to link these developments to the material base on which they are built. If Curtis is anything, he is a reverse Marxist, for whom the superstructure ultimately determines the base. This, I think, is where the accusations of aestheticism which sometimes dog Curtis are most justifiable.