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Michael Portillo: Digging up the Dead, BBC2
Not Forgotten: Soldiers of Empire, Channel 4
HAVING successfully forged for himself a second career as a presenter of thoughtful documentaries about serious things, it is now conceivable that many people think of Michael Portillo as merely "that nice man off the telly", rather than a widely reviled Conservative MP. This unforeseen image change is, if nothing else, testament to TV's ability to humanise people.
Portillo documentaries can be bracketed into two distinct categories: those deadly earnest yet inadvertently hilarious programmes in which he explores hot topics such as capital punishment by undergoing gruelling physical and psychological tests, and the sensitive, more personal ones, such as when he eulogised the tragic suicide of an old school friend. Despite its rather lurid title, Michael Portillo: Digging Up the Dead fortunately fell into...