Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston – the tale of ordinary Romans’ hopeless heroism is tearjerking television

The Avengers star teams up with real-life scholars for a look at the eruption of Vesuvius.

At points it’s elegiac and moving, at others it’s majestic and brutal It’s always funny when documentaries strategically pair a possibly boring topic with a famous face, just to sex them up.

A History of NCP Car Parks By Tinie Tempah, say, or World’s Deadliest Sleep Disorders With Anna Maxwell Martin.

So when I saw that Tom Hiddleston was hosting a National Geographic investigation into the destruction of Pompeii in AD79 (Disney+, from Thursday), there was no way I wasn’t watching.

The actor has famously sauntered through life’s most vaunted way stations: Eton, Cambridge, Rada, Kong: Skull Island . Privilege and perceived smugness have long been sticks to beat him with.

It’s harder to argue he’s not qualified for this job, having earned a double first in classics. Here, he slips into the role of undergraduate detective.

A real-life scholar is forced to cosplay as his don during their interview, addressing Hiddleston by surname, issuing prim little reprimands. Hiddleston even translates Latin headstones in the first episode.

I don’t know what the ancient Roman for “screw it, I’m leaning in” is

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  Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston – the tale of ordinary Romans’ hopeless heroism is tearjerking television