BBC2 has a bit of a tradition of putting on classy drama-documentaries on a Friday night. Well, ok I can think of one – but that was Conspiracy, about the Nazis deciding what to do with the Jewish population, AKA one of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen. So, hey, worth a mention. The point of this is that I have high hopes for this, a three-part drama-documentary following that old baffoon Custer and his last stand.

In the lead role is Toby Stephens, who’s pretty much incapable of putting in a bad performance, and we’re promised that while fictionalised history documentaries aren’t exactly known for really getting across any real sense of scale or importance (budget restrictions, you see), director David Stewart employs plenty of smoke and mirrors to make this a really good-looking programme. The story, of course, is always worth hearing again, and the show makes use of "the latest archaeology of the battle scene and detailed examination of long-buried source material to provide a radical new picture of the battle and how it unfolded". It also announces that new research suggests that maybe we’ve been a bit harsh on General Custer, and that he was in fact on the verge of victory. [annawaits]