Historical Inaccuracies- Do they really matter?

The news is always full of stories of how the latest period drama has got it so wrong. For some people these historical inaccuracies are not acceptable but for others as long as the story is engaging they don’t care. For me I find that if I am noticing historical inaccuracies it is because the story has not drawn me in.

There is a misconception that because the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are public service broadcasters they have to be totally historically accurate. The BBC charter says “Accuracy must be adequate and appropriate to the output, taking account of the subject and nature of the content.” so they have an excuse as it is dependent on the output. Ofcom in the Broadcasting code says “They expect a realistic portrayal with an element of factual accuracy, but viewers also accept that, for drama’s sake, exaggeration of a situation or concentration on one possible outcome is needed to entertain.”

So if they have this ‘get out clause’ why is getting historical accuracy so important for broadcasters, particularly the public service ones? The Royal Television Society (RTS), recently released an article calling for more historical accuracy on Television; Richard Roberts, Professor of History at Kings College London explains, "Most people's understanding of the past is from what they see in film and television."  So the general public are learning about history from period dramas.

Lord Reith knew of the power of television to influence public opinion and therefore said that the broadcasters have a moral responsibility to portray things accurately. So period dramas are seen particularly by the BBC as a way of educating people in an interesting way which, is why if they do not show things accurately then they can be accused of misinforming a public.

The original cast of the Horrible History TV Show demonstrating the range of history the show covers

This becomes more of an issue when the BBC is creating educational programming like Horrible Histories. While Terry Derry, the book’s author says “They’ll be entertainments first. They are not history books which have to be 100 per cent accurate.” But the problem arises if the audience can’t tell the inaccuracies from accuracies and they are watching the show to learn but the inaccuracies mean they are being misled and mistaught. As the BBC says in its charter accuracy helps build trust within the audience and they have a moral obligation not to mislead them.

Richard Rex, lecturer in Reformation History at Cambridge University said in the TRS article “There's no legal or even moral obligation on a fiction writer to restrict themselves to historical fact.” However if they take full dramatic licence they leave themselves open to “legitimate criticism”. While a large amount of the Television audiences will not be historians a few are and now thanks to social media they are able to rant to the world. Newspapers revel in tearing apart TV shows with a particular focus on Historical inaccuracies.

These images of The White Queen were from the Daily Mail:

It starts to seem like a game; the more knowledgeable you are the more historical inaccuracy you will notice. There by proving the superficialness of it all.

Watch this video of a Georgian maid airing a rug that is deliberately full of inaccuracies:

But does it really matter? Newspapers behave as if every time they find an historical inaccuracy it is another knife in the broadcaster’s coffin but Ofcom found that “Approximately eight in ten respondents in the quantitative study believed that accuracy was important in the portrayal of both recent (81%) and historical events (77%)”. While it is important to get historical events right, people would far rather have recent events portrayed accurately. The recent loss of trust in the BBC has more to do with the Savile and McAlpine scandals than an appearance of a Zip in The White Queen.

Though this hysteria within the media that historical inaccuracies are morally wrong actually demonstrates how it has underestimated its audience. On one chat room one lady said “I watched the Tudors long enough to know it was historically inaccurate.” She was aware it was not historically accurate but she continued to watch it. Downton Abbey is constantly accused of being historically inaccurate but 5.52 million still tuned in to watch the Christmas special and that gravy train seems to have little chance of stopping at least for another 2 seasons.

So why do the broadcasters spend so much time and money getting this accurate? The short answer is the story. The failure of The White Queen is not its historical inaccuracies but the fact it was a bad story, Downton Abbey has not been a phenomenal success because of historical accuracy but because of its story. Historical accuracy is only important in the service of the story, it is there to create a believable backdrop in which the story can take place. If you are doing something set in a period then historical accuracy has to be important so it does not distract from the story.