Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow is for people who enjoy hearing what ordinary-looking objects can become once experts explain their history, craft, and market value. By our assessment, its real strength is the mix of appraisal and storytelling: each item gets a small biography, not just a price tag. The downside is that the pleasure depends on liking slow reveals and listening to specialists talk at length. In practice it feels calm, almost bookish, with the occasional surprise when a family object turns out to matter more than it first seemed. Against harder-edged auction shows, it is gentler and more educational. The Astrina catalogue files Antiques Roadshow under History, and that is the right place for a series that treats objects as traces of the past.