Lost Treasures – An Idea Whose Time Had Come by Mark Olly

I began my career as an archaeologist in 1970 aged just 8, when my father dumped me in a trench on a Roman dig site and said “start troweling !” My first ‘find’ was a red Samian Ware pot base and I was hooked.  That was 40 years ago and just the start of a long story . . . .

In 1994 I had the idea to produce a series of books based on local and regional archaeology, history and folk-lore in the mid Mersey Valley, which I did while recovering from a back injury during 1995 and 1996.  The book ‘Celtic Warrington & Other Mysteries – Book 1’ (ISBN 1 897949 43 X) was released by Churnet Valley Books of Leek in 1997, followed by ‘Book 2’ (ISBN 1 897949 57 X) in 1999 and ‘Book 3’ (ISBN 1 897949 83 9) in 2002, and launched my new career back in archaeology.  Formerly my ‘day job’ was in the music and media industry of the 1980’s and 1990’s and the injury had taken me out of performance art altogether, however the experience I had gained made me want to convert the books into a show for television called ‘History Quest’.  While lecturing in archaeology at Chester University in 2004 I met producer Phil Hirst, who had a similar vision for a regional history show called ‘Lost Treasures’, and we combined that year to produce a private documentary on a house in North Wales which proved it could be done.

We then produced a 4 minute trailer using footage filmed on some of my archaeological digs and using my idea for a theme, ‘Ghost Love Score’ by Nightwish, and approached Granada in Manchester through Aemon O’Neil.  He liked the whole concept and gave us a six part, half hour regional show on condition that I was the presenter.  The show was unusual in that it was always ‘News & Current Affairs’ (ITV “don’t do archaeology”), it utilized subject driven production ‘trees’ based on themes and locations instead of scripts, and at least a third of the show content was shot live ‘on-the-hoof’.  It was filmed and broadcast in 2005 and nominated as ITV Granada ‘Feature Program Of The Year’ in the ITV News Group London Awards of 2006.

In 2006 we produced ‘Britain’s Lost Mega Fortress’ for Sky History Channel based on the huge amount of information we had unearthed about Chester, and Mike Blair at ITV commissioned the next 8 episodes of Lost Treasures which we filmed in 2007 at the rate of about one a month.  This series proved so popular that they immediately commissioned another 8 episodes in 2008 which were voted “the best program on television” by all 12 members of the Viewer’s Review Panel, apparently a first in 55 years of ITV!  The episode on ‘Pendle & The Witches’ was the highest viewed program on television the night it was aired pulling over six hundred thousand viewers.

Then came the declining years.

In 2009 regional TV slots were reduced to 15 minutes which killed the show, Sky enthusiastically bought Series 1 & 2 and repeat them to this day, but the first series only made it to DVD in 2010 and failed to sell (meaning Series 2 & 3 remain unreleased), and Series 3 was never bought by Sky and remains ‘lost’ to the public.  The planned extended one hour versions of the shows were never made despite huge amounts of additional footage and out takes, and two interviews with myself and a ‘lost episode’ remain unreleased.  Sky commissioned ‘Arthur’s Real Round Table Revealed’ in 2009 and ‘Rome’s Lost Legion’ in 2010 but neither featured on screen contributions by myself, just extensive background research, and Planet X Productions folded in 2010.  Now the show and a string of other ideas are once again looking for a home . . . .

Watch this space for part two of this article.