Time well spent

The Private Life of a Masterpiece (BBC1, Saturday) got an Easter outing about Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’.

The Private Life of a Masterpiece (BBC1, Saturday) got an Easter outing about Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’. It was superb, as this series invariably is. Understated yet informative, packed with unpatronising experts, it fascinates from start to end. Did you know that Caravaggio was a gangster and murderer, who spent the end of his short life on the run? Or that this particular painting was then the most expensive ever commissioned (125 scudi; I have no idea what that might have been against sterling), or that it sold in Scotland for just eight guineas 120 years ago? Having been misattributed it travelled all over Europe and spent years hanging over a fireplace in Dublin, gathering dust and grime.

And the painting itself is fabulous, a dazzling paparazzi close-up of a celebrity under terminal stress. Caravaggio painted very fast, as if he had been lying in wait for Judas to plant the kiss. All this was explained through a calm voice-over from Sam West (if some art critic had got hold of it, his agenda would probably have been to impress other art critics). It is commonplace to say of some programmes that they took an hour of your life you will never get back; I would happily lose that hour again.

The Masters is the first major golf tournament and the ending (BBC2, Sunday) was thrilling. It also marked the return of Peter Alliss. Others have written at length about this commentator, but I have always found it difficult to decide why I find him so intriguing and yet so infuriating. I’ve decided he is like one of those jars of fruit preserved in liqueur that arrives in a Christmas hamper: rich, unctuous and fruity.