Last week BBC2 added yet another programme about antiques to an already groaning portfolio. Which means it's time to turn the popularity of the antiques show upside down and have a look at its bottom. The newcomer, Antiques Uncovered (Weds, BBC2, 8pm), probes beneath the varnished surface of the lovely things to discover where they actually came from and how they were made. Dr Lucy Worsley and antiques expert Mark Hill gad about stately homes, poring over dainty teacups and handsome tables, before finding out what went into producing them. It's wholly satisfying for several reasons including the unbound enthusiasm of Worsley. Her presenting style is very much "member of the Famous Five" and is nothing short of joyous. You half expect her to beckon you over conspiratorially to ask you to look in her pocket because there's a worm in there. But what else makes an appealing antiques show? Let's examine the tell-tale markings.
Avaricious punters
We're not talking about the openly greedy types who sit panting at David Dickinson's baize-covered table, watching as he peels off tenner after tenner and places it inches from their sweating hands. You've seen one, you've seen them all. No, it's the restrained, polite, aspirational ones that go on Antiques Roadshow. Of course most don't care about financial gain. They're just really intrigued to know the story of the 17th-century wine cooler they were left in their auntie's will. They just think it's a beautiful object and wouldn't dream of parting with it. Behind that thin veneer of righteousness beats the heart of a cash-hungry social climber crossing everything that their ugly old oil painting is a lost Richard Dadd. We tune in almost exclusively to see them Britishly trying to conceal their greed. There is no finer spectator sport.
Enthusiastic experts
Every good antiques show needs passionate, and preferably eccentric, specialists. In my youth, the cuddly and befuddly Henry Sandon dispensed anecdotes and valuations like a many-chinned grandfather clock on Antiques Roadshow. Cleverer than an encyclopaedia but also madly appealing, he could stir interest in the most unlikely of subjects with his avuncular eye-twinkling. On Channel 4's Four Rooms, the idea seems to be to provide something for everyone. There are a couple of well-rounded port quaffers – Jeffrey Salmon and Gordon Watson – one of whom has an ego of astonishing proportions. There's gimlet-eyed city slicker Andrew Lamberty who'll buy any old tut if he thinks his Square Mile wideboy customers will bite. And finally there's an apparently interchangeable dominatrix lady – Emma Hawkins in series one and Celia Sawyer in series two – whose job it is to bamboozle eager punters with her tight trousers and continual wry smirk. Like an X Factor with antiques instead of singers, it's the judges/experts people tune in for.
Massively expensive things you can't afford
Cash in the Attic and its ilk are all very well but only visiting one attic per week really cuts down their chances of netting that big-money find. The Antiques Roadshow has unearthed a few bobby dazzlers in its time. There was the aforementioned Richard Dadd painting that went for £100,000, and some silver hunting cups not long afterwards that were worth a quarter of a million. But it's the anticipation of these large sums that keeps us coming back week after week. There's a vicarious thrill in seeing a nice person getting the good news that grandma's minging vase is actually Ming dynasty. And obviously, the expression on the face of a smuggo who has just been told his Duchamp is a dud is, to the regular antiques show viewer, truly priceless.
