CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Slavery, a killer pirate... and a treasure chest of twisted history

A House Through Time

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The Yorkshire Vet: The Peter Wright Story

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What a surprise. Of all the houses that Lefty British-Nigerian historian David Olusoga could have picked to illustrate Bristol’s past, he chose one steeped in slavery.

True, it was a big part of the city’s history. But he might have selected 13 Lansdown Place, the home of Victorian doctor William Budd, as the location for his third series of A House Through Time (BBC2). Dr Budd discovered how epidemics of typhoid and cholera were spread, and his work has been crucial in helping us understand Covid-19.

Or, Olusoga could have gone for the site on Clifton’s Triangle where oddball William Friese-Greene worked as a photographer’s apprentice in the 19th century before he invented moving pictures.

Thanks to Friese-Greene, another Bristol lad found fame in the Thirties, changing his name from Archibald Leach to Cary Grant. He was born at 15 Hughenden Road, in Horfield.

Instead, Olusoga chose 10 Guinea Street, close to the city docks, which was built on profits from the slave trade 300 years ago and first rented out to a slave-ship captain.

The historian, who has lived in Bristol (my home town) for 20 years, clearly sees the complex past of this city in starkly divisive terms.

For a year or so, the house was occupied by a scribbler named John Shebbeare, a political satirist. He was put on trial for libel after publishing a pamphlet that blamed all Britain’s problems on its German king, George II.

The novelist Fanny Burney once went to dinner with the Shebbeares and reeled away in horror at the man’s crass jokes — sexist and politically incorrect even by Georgian standards. But his outspoken attacks on the corrupt government made him hugely popular with ordinary people.

A Bristolian bigmouth, famous for his rudeness, who probably wasn’t half as funny as he thought he was, Dr Shebbeare might just be my new patron saint.

Another eccentric typical of the town had a fleeting cameo in the Guinea Street story: pirate captain Bridstock Weaver. The way Olusoga told it, Weaver was an unfortunate soul, trapped in a life of crime by no fault of his own, who reformed and settled in Bristol.

His life was supposedly ruined by a slave trader (yes, another one) who happened to be living at No 10. But a look at the National Archives reveals Weaver was nobody’s victim: a murderer, a schemer and a ruthlessly successful robber.

Painting such a colourful villain as a wronged man is ridiculous. That’s what happens when history is twisted to fit a preconceived theory. 

The past was more benign on The Yorkshire Vet: The Peter Wright Story (C5) as the softly spoken animal doctor retraced his life playing apprentice to Alf Wight and Donald Sinclair — better known as James Herriot and Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great And Small.

Channel 5 is remaking All Creatures, airing it later this year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of these much-loved books. Samuel West plays Siegfried and Callum Woodhouse, from The Durrells, is his amiably hopeless younger brother, Tristan.

Peter Wright has told many of these stories before, over the five years that documentary cameras have followed him on late-night lambing trips and cattle births across the North Riding.

But it was gently amusing to see the shudder of fear that crossed his face when he recalled his first telling off from an apoplectic Siegfried — after turning up late for work without his tie. Peter’s reason? He’d been up all night, struggling to deliver a calf. That excuse didn’t save him.