This Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 20th, BBC2 broad­casts the doc­u­men­tary The Machine that Made Us: Stephen Fry and the Guten­berg Press, pro­duced by Wave­length Films. I believe this to be the first time that people out­side the UK will be able to watch it, because up till now it has only been shown on BBC4, and  the online ver­sion on the BBC’s iPlayer can’t be viewed if you’re living out­side the UK. So pro­gram what­ever record­ing device you have hooked up to your telly – espe­cially if you’re attend­ing ATypI’08 St.Peters­burg at the end of the week.

Here’s the descrip­tion for the show, part of BBC4’s Medieval Season, on the BBC4 website:

“Stephen Fry exam­ines the story behind the first media entre­pre­neur, print­ing press inven­tor Johann Guten­berg. He finds out why he did it and how – a story which involves both his­tor­i­cal enquiry and hands-​on craft and tech­nol­ogy. Fry trav­els across Europe to find out how Guten­berg kept his devel­op­ment work secret, about the role of avari­cious investors and unscrupu­lous com­peti­tors, and why Gutenberg’s approach started a cul­tural rev­o­lu­tion. He then sets about build­ing a copy of Gutenberg’s press.”

As always the charm­ing Stephen Fry dis­plays a gen­uine inter­est in his sub­ject, and he doesn’t hes­i­tate to get down and dirty, cut­ting type, hand­mak­ing paper and aiding with pro­duc­tion of the actual press. Fry’s endear­ing enthu­si­asm makes this one def­i­nitely worth viewing.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the crit­ics had to say about the film after it pre­miered on BBC4 on Monday, April 14th:

“this ter­rific doc­u­men­tary” — Simon Hors­ford, Telegraph

“a fine doc­u­men­tary … a reminder that tele­vi­sion too, some­times counts as a pretty decent inven­tion” — Brian Viner, The Independent

“the best doc­u­men­tary of the night” — Andrew Billen, The Times

“an absorb­ing doc­u­men­tary … a win­ning com­bi­na­tion of wit and wonder — Stephanie Billen, The Observer

“Stephen Fry gets Beeb 4’s Medieval season off to a splen­did start” — Mik Duffy, The Scotsman

“a remark­able story” — The Guardian