History is updated

A new BBC series has re-enacted Captain Cook's voyage of discovery. Meg Carter reports on this latest format of 'extreme history'

After docu-soaps and reality television it was only a matter of time before the rush to create alternative formats extended further into the television schedules. Already natural history has spawned "natural history lite" with celeb-fronted animal specials and a slew of series based on the funny side of wildlife. This week it's history's turn. Tonight sees the start of The Ship on BBC 2 – and the arrival of what industry insiders call "extreme history".

The "extreme" approach borrows from a number of television genres. At first glance the main idea of The Ship is familiar: to follow in Captain Cook's footsteps by recreating a leg of his epic 1768 voyage of discovery around the north-east coast of Australia. But this is conventional history with a new twist.

It would have been all too easy to cut together expert "talking heads" and computer-generated images reconstructing events. Instead, the BBC wanted to create "a show with heart". So a full-scale replica of Endeavour, was procured; a team of volunteers including experts in history, astronomy and navigation was recruited; and the journey recreated.

Echoes of Big Brother and 1900 House spring to mind. But this isn't a variation on reality television, The Ship's producer/director Chris Terrill insists: "Yes we advertised for volunteers, and yes we selected those we thought would be the best – but the most likely candidates for Big Brother we left behind."

In The Ship, ordinary volunteers and experts work side by side to test 18th century orthodoxy against real experience in extreme conditions. There's insight and high drama. Yet while the replica ship is stocked and crewed as it would have been in 1768, the focus isn't on how tough it is for 21st century "softies" but the achievements of Cook and his crew.

The BBC is resistant to any suggestion that the extravagant format might obstruct serious intentions. According to Glenwyn Benson, the BBC's Joint Director of Factual and Learning, history on TV needs refreshing: "One must look beyond documentary material to inform and enlighten our understanding of the past." Also important is "emotional engagement" with the audience, and that comes through presentation. "Given how much occurred before film or photography, we must be ever more inventive to bring history to life," Benson adds.

"Bringing history to life" is all about how to tell a story and, increasingly, persuading an audience to participate. The traditional way to draw an audience into history is through dramatic storytelling – an approach that still has its appeal. For proof look no further than the recent achievements of David Starkey and Simon Schama. Both have effectively brought history to life with charismatic narrative style and a strong contemporary perspective on past events. But it was Channel 4's 1900 House that first showed the potential to extend history programming's appeal beyond its traditional, older, male-biased audience. Its legacy, however, has been mixed: a string of lookalikes, a new focus on stretching television history in new directions, and then a backlash against last year's First World War experiment, The Trench.

Unarguably The Trench, in which 21st century volunteers re-enacted life on the western front in 1916, was an ambitious idea. But it back-fired, one programme executive now concedes, by becoming "more 'reality TV' than historic re-enactment". It was accused of dubious taste and putting entertainment before factual content. He adds: "More important than entertaining through spectacle must be informing through emotional engagement – there is a distinct difference."

So the emphasis now is on creating challenging new formats able to engage audiences to participate without compromising content. Which is where the "extreme" approach comes in.

At Discovery Channel, which airs 25 hours of history programming a week, recent innovations have included a live, Crimewatch-style investigation into the true identity of Jack the Ripper including court-room style interrogation of witnesses and an audience vote.

"We are always reviewing formats and are exploring what we call 'living history'," Bettina Hatami, the commissioning editor of history at Discovery Europe explains. "We've been building a Roman villa in Hampshire using only materials and techniques that would have been available, testing methods and filming the results."

Terrill, meanwhile, is already developing another idea that he believes will push history programming even further. "I'm sure traditionalists will say this is not the stuff of scholarship," he says. "But experts involved in The Ship came away with a different perspective on history that they thought they already knew. That, and how the audience will respond, is the acid test."

'The Ship' is on BBC 2 tonight, 9pm