It’s always the same, but you settle down to watch something and the phone rings. This happened to me last night, just as Indiana Jones: The True Story was starting. I was intrigued by this not least because I’m a fan of the films, but also because there was another programme on Channel 4 earlier in the week covering a similar subject. Still, I should be knowing better really – whenever there’s a big new film coming out, some TV bandwagon jumping will inevitably follow. But that’s ok… this was pretty good and interesting.

The main question this show was asking was: is there any truth in the fictional Indiana Jones character? Although it was stated late on that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had devoured loads and loads of old-style matinee cinema in order to construct their patchwork hero, the programme focused on two men that were as close to Indiana Jones as real life would let them.

Using talking heads with those in the know, and some glossy reconstructions, we met Roy Chapman Andrews, and American explorer and naturalist, and Otto Rahn, a German medievalist who specialised in searching for the Holy Grail.

Unfortunately, I missed the first part of the doc due to the phone call (Phil says hi) but what I could gather was the RCA was something of a full-on character, had an eye for the ladies and went off around the world looking for adventure. He invariably found them. He did his thing in the early part of the 20th century… he found dinosaur eggs and all sorts.

While RCA was all bravado, Otto Rahn was shrouded in secrecy and conducted himself differently. Reconstructions showed him conduct much of is research in the south of France, and explained that he thought the Cathars were the missing link to the Grail. We then saw him and his African companion enter a cave system looking for the Grail, only to run out some time later after narrowly escaping an underground flood.

Rahn’s work and research got noticed by the Nazis, who were on the brink of world domination (or so they thought). While Hitler was busy planning a modernist future, his second-in-command, Himmler, was bang into his occult, and hired Rahn to find the Grail for him. Himmler…. funny chap. Not ha-ha though. He had built castles into the shape of Biblical symbols and listed neo-paganism as one of his obsessions.

Rahn’s relationship with the SS soured and the explorer committed suicide in the Austrian mountains in 1939, at the express request of Himmler (you commit suicide or we’ll take you out, was his choice).

So two different men from the past, one movie character. Did the programme do what it set out to do… prove that there were real-life links to Indy? Yes. What’s more, the two men it choose to link the film character with were fascinating characters, and the pace of the reconstructions were almost action adventure like (which was handy because there were plenty of clips from the films interspersed with the talking heads and reconstructions).

So Indy’s back, and he’ll be on our screens next month. But this enjoyable programme proved he never really went away.