Blast from the past- Nerdtastic TV

It is fair to say that the last five or six years have been good to the nerd. The world has come to us which is a relief because we damn well weren’t going to pluck up the courage to come to it.

All we had to do was keep doing what we always did and it eventually became cool. We played the waiting game with the law of averages and we were the lucky generation of nerds it paid off for. Video gaming, glasses, skinny jeans and faintly ironic T-shirts were in.

The fact that we became mainstream and hated it is another thought for another day because we’re here to examine an old TV show that just missed the point at which nerdism (totally a word) became acceptable. That show is the BBC's two series wonder, Time Commanders.

My generation of history and video game nerds was well served at the start of this century with the masterful Age of Empires series and the not very masterful but purely epic Total War series dominating our lives and guiding us on our first tentative steps into the world of online gaming. Yeah, thanks for that experience at the age of 12.

Essentially, Time Commanders took the Total War series and made it into a television show, thus instantly allowing thousands of people like me to do a primitive LOL at the contestants who failed show after show. Victory was a seldom seen outcome as the scales were tipped by getting contestants without experience of video gaming. Somewhat unrealistic perhaps as I don’t think the Romans ensured that their enemies’ armies were commanded by farmers but there we go.

Shot in an old warehouse reminiscent of any torture porn film set, Time Commanders allowed a team of four people, usually work colleagues (or, on one happy day, an all star celebrity team of Kate Silverton, Al Murray, Raji James and Ricky Flower), who took control of a virtual army in a battle from ancient history on a game engine similar to Rome; Total War.

Two of the team were “Generals” who ‘controlled’ (very loose term that) the battle from a raised platform in the centre of the warehouse, using a real-time overhead map and huge main screen in front of them. Much like real life Generals, these team members would pretend to have a plan whilst other team members would put in the hard yakka. Naturally, when things went wrong, it wasn’t their fault.

Said other two team members were “Lieutenants” who took incoherent or foolish orders from their Generals. The “Lieutenants” would then relay the orders in a further incoherent manner on to their own individual techie, resplendent in a black cap and seemingly without voices, who would control the units of the army for them. Chinese whispers clearly made battle a lot more confusing than the simple expedient of a phone.

Meanwhile, high on a balcony overlooking the team stood a pair of military historians judging the team and occasionally speaking to the camera. These men (they were always men because weapons and war and shit is manly stuff) were the real heroes of the show.

Ever-present Dr Aryeh Nusbacher was as excitable as a man who just found out his chat up line might be working. The other role was on rotation and was usually most fun when Mike Loades came in and played about in a faintly aggressive manner with some ancient weaponry. Other times, Saul David disappointingly didn’t wear a brown leather jacket and future Newsnight ‘Diplomacy Editor’ Mark Urban dreamt of more respectable TV appearances.

Completing the line up, initially at least, was the superb and currently dreadfully underused Eddie Mair with his funky earpiece thing that made me think he was deaf at first. After the first series, the decision was taken to begin the now customary task of finding a non-Top Gear role for Richard Hammond. The host’s role was to basically be very friendly and helpful whilst occasionally stating the obvious of what was happening on the big screen.

The fun of it all came when, inevitably, the team’s battle plan survived all of five seconds of contact with the enemy and then cue panicking and ultimate failure amongst much bickering, which was probably how battles worked in the ancient world although it’s fair to say there was almost certainly not a celebratory/commiseratory orgy at the end of the show.

Thankfully, if the team lost, the two historians would come down to them and say “Not to worry, you may have lost the battle but so did Alexander the Great in this particular conflict so, yeah, that’s fair enough.” This allowed everyone to go home happy with their day’s work. Apart from the thousands of dead or wounded CGI Celts who were less pleased with their day’s lot.

If you're sad like me, YouTube has plenty of clips to while away your time http://tinyurl.com/bv4nyoz