We watched it. There's a time and a place for deep scholarship and accurate historical reenactments; but there's also a time and a place for *fun*. To me, it had enough of the scholarship to satisfy my inner pedant, but it was bags of fun, and all told very reminiscent of some of the best early-music performances I've been to. I'd never heard Leaving Of Liverpool done as a slow-paced song of departure* before: surprisingly moving. (I tried that a few days later at a live session, and it's very effective.)

My take: Back in the Commonwealth, the musicians used material which was familiar then to their audiences. In the programme in question, the musicians recreated the atmosphere of *then* for today's audience, by using songs and tunes which are familiar *now*. Possibly anachronistic, but much fun was had by all, and who knows which of the audience might have thereby been drawn into the Real Thing :-) ?

€0.02 from the demented keyboard of:

                           MaJoC

* cf The Parting Glass, which I was Told should be sung as if tiptoeing out of the bar. I'd just been guilty of taking it at full-pelt chanty speed, as if being sung over one's shoulder while being frogmarched out of the pub by the bouncer.