In 1966 the BBC gave Kenneth Clark, then director of the National Gallery, a nearly unlimited budget and a simple brief: tell the story of Western art from the fall of Rome to the early twentieth century. Clark walks through cathedrals, palaces, and museums across Europe, standing in front of the actual objects, Chartres, the Sistine Chapel, Rodin's sculptures, and talking directly to camera about what they meant to the people who made them. He calls his own definition of civilisation vague and admits he cannot define it precisely, but insists he knows it when he sees it, and the thirteen episodes are his attempt to show rather than argue the case. The series moves chronologically, from the Dark Ages through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and into the Industrial Revolution, treating architecture, painting, music, and philosophy as evidence of the same underlying confidence or doubt in a given age. Shot on location with no reenactments needed, it set the template every prestige documentary series since has copied.