Educational Media Reviews Online

There have been many dramatic productions, compositions, and books based on The Arabian Nights, which has enthralled children and adults for generations. Richard E. Grant, an actor who put together this documentary, has loved this book since childhood, and was interested in knowing how and why it still thrills our imagination as human beings. So he decided, with the help of BBC filmmakers, to travel around the world and find out. This film follows Grant's travels from Cairo to Paris and back to Cairo, interspersing historical narrative and modern-day interviews with a wide variety of personalities, including Marina Warner, Paul O'Grady (former drag queen and well-known U.K. panto dames), and Egyptian writer and publisher Gamal al Ghitani (whose new edition of Nights resulted in death threats). Given the current vogue of celebrities who take trips to locations around the world and film a kind of historical/reality show (Michael Palin of "Monty Python" fame and his travels to Tibet come to mind), this could be of interest to those who have read and loved these stories. A warning: there is mature content, so this should not be used in a K-12 classroom.