King & Conqueror, BBC1, Sunday, 9.10pm.

Hostage, Netflix

Bettany Hughes’ Lost Worlds, Channel 4, Saturday, 8.10pm.

Noel Edmonds’ Kiwi Adventure, VM1, Wednesday, 9.00pm.

It feels like forever since BBC first shared a clip of its big new historical drama King & Conqueror, but I suppose it is more of an autumn kind of story: the legendary events, famous names, and epically uncomfortable outfits around the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Now that I write that, it’s hard to understand why the story hasn’t been presented as a big TV show before now: it’s famous, and it would seem to have just about everything, especially in the wake of shows like Game Of Thrones. And just to be sure, it even has GOT’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William of Normandy (whom we know better as William the Conqueror).

William’s opposite number, sometime ally and ultimately his rival, is James Norton’s Harold Godwinson. They meet initially at the coronation of England’s King Edward (the Confessor, played here by Eddie Marsan, who’s clearly enjoying himself) where Harold moans unsuccessfully on about treachery. It’s not an uncommon worry. Because, you see, there are a lot of other powerful kingdoms and personalities, each with their own agendas, each vying for power in the usual ways (politics, marriage, war, deception), each with an eye of some sort on more power.

Each also, it must be said, is serving to delay until a later episode the battle which we know is coming. Of course all the real machinations are interesting, and are sometimes entertaining here too. But it feels less than authentic too: a bit too deliberately stylish, with dark scenes and dialogue that occasionally sounds like a Middle Ages Eastenders, and, oh God here we go again, some mumbling actors.

There are strong points, or at least less weak points, too: some scenes (usually around the beaches) look great, and the cast members do bring a bit of glamour to it even when the script fails them. But it never feels serious, and I suspect already that the Battle of Hastings, when it comes, will feel either too small to deserve eight episodes, or will be puffed up with flashy-looking CGI that puts an arrow in the eye of whatever little bit of atmosphere it has generated by then.

Hostage

Suranne Jones has been such a strong and reliable TV actor for so long now that it feels odd that she’s never really moved into film. But then again, with cinema all wrapped up in spandex, maybe Netflix is the more worthy option. That’s where she’s popped up now, in a show called Hostage that also promotes her, finally, to British Prime Minister and maybe even action star: it’s actually very much one of those all-tension-no-conviction thrillers you might have seen her in on BBC anyway.

Jones plays PM Abigail Dalton, and we first meet her doing the routine PM things: bustling about corridors in blue, arguing about things like defence and NHS spending, and suffering the boos and catcalls from voters for those very same things. She’s also dealing with a difficult relationship with her father (James Cosmo), though early on at least that’s not such a focus: the real focus comes when her husband Dr Alex Anderson (Ashley Thomas) is kidnapped, putting severe personal and professional pressures on Abigail, and changing her new, awkward relationship with French President Toussaint (Julie Delpy).

There’s a perfunctory busyness to the early scenes that aims to set scenes and personalities as quickly as possible, and that’s mostly a good thing: it’s not, to be honest, good enough to spend too much time dwelling on, too often bordering on familiar soapy drama, weirdly underdoing the real issues while constantly making points about Abigail’s tired feet. It’s at its best in the snippy, hard-to-read exchanges between PM and President, and both women are well cast.

And then, just as the first episode began to settle into its generic-but-tolerable groove, a ridiculous soapy twist emerged that, for me at least, killed whatever scant veracity it had: it becomes suddenly as vague and vacuous as a bad politician. I mean, it’s pacy enough that you might still sit through it, but only for curiosity rather than actual engagement; and you won’t remember it in a few weeks’ time.

Bettany Hughes’ Lost Worlds

If you’re more interested in ancient international politics, Bettany Hughes is back with her Lost Worlds series, although I think the show would be better suited to a Sunday night slot rather than the primetime Saturday one it’s been given. Still, given that its subject is the largely forgotten Nabatean culture – rather than, say, the more familiar Egyptian or Roman ones – it’s impressive that Channel 4 have given her three episodes to explore it. Whether or not that’s too much might depend on your own fascination for history.

In fairness, while the Nabatean brand might not mean too much these days, their power was once considerable (in some ways they rivalled Rome), and they left their mark on the world in ways that are still familiar: everyone knows Petra, their rose-red capital city, after all. Bettany began her exploration in another site called Hegra in Saudi Arabia, a once-thriving city that’s recently yielded a lot of good archaeological discoveries. And it’s not all just pottery shards either: there are spectacular rock tombs and underwater shrines, coins with Cleopatra on them, and stories about the power they gained from owning a source of the then-mysterious bitumen. They were a central hub of trade routes from the Arabian Peninsula to all across the Mediterranean after all: forgotten by most now, but fun and picturesque to rediscover here.

Noel Edmonds’ Kiwi Adventure

And here comes Noel Edmonds’ Kiwi Adventure, a strange programme, and a strange one to see on an Irish channel, about a strange man. Noel Edmonds has been, at different times over the last 45 years, one of the most familiar faces on telly, and while he has kept clear of the scandals that sank many of his peers, his image is of an odd man with a panoply of New Age beliefs. And it turns out he’s not shy about sharing them either: even though this is a series ostensibly following Edmonds and his wife Liz opening a restaurant in New Zealand, there is a lot of time spent with Noel lying on a crystal bed, mixing quietness with exercise in something he calls “tranquil power”, and referring to Liz as his earth angel (she was “a gift from the cosmos”). It makes for some come-again viewing, and could even make this otherwise routine series into a kind of ironic cult favourite. What might even be the strangest part is that, despite everything, Edmonds actually comes across as open, unsure of himself, and basically a cheesy-but-decent sort. And whatever he’s doing, you’d certainly never guess that he’s 76. But you do wish he would stop referring to himself in the third person.