![Details of RMS Titanic's doomed voyage were delivered both by historians and by the descendants of the passengers and crew members on board](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/02/TELEMMGLPICT000387423359_17226155763900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3Xh2eiz55rGmgbGmxk0ksl5NUcTKNHKqy85KLqtvPLE.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Titanic in Colour, Channel 4, review: breathing new life into the famous tragedy
All hands on deck for this fascinating and meticulously researched account of what happened on board RMS Titanic
![Details of RMS Titanic's doomed voyage were delivered both by historians and by the descendants of the passengers and crew members on board](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/02/TELEMMGLPICT000387423359_17226155763900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3Xh2eiz55rGmgbGmxk0ksl5NUcTKNHKqy85KLqtvPLE.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Titanic in Colour (Channel 4) would have been a great idea in 1996. “It’s a story often told in black and white. Now we reveal the ship in its true colours,” says narrator Tracy-Ann Oberman at the beginning, before promising us colorised photographs and film footage of the Titanic and her sister ships.
If only James Cameron hadn’t come along in 1997 and given us one of the highest-grossing films of all time about this very thing, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio thrown in. Cameron’s film was meticulously researched – he is a Titanic obsessive – which means that the ship’s interiors were spot on, as were the details of what happened.
Colorising the film and building the programme’s title around it seemed a little gimmicky. Which was unnecessary, because this was otherwise a well-structured and well-presented documentary, managing to breathe new life into the story. My 11-year-old, not yet old enough to have seen Cameron’s weepy epic and only vaguely familiar with the story, was gripped. I have watched countless films and factual programmes about the Titanic, and I also found this one to be compelling.
Details of Titanic’s construction and doomed voyage were delivered both by historians and by the descendants of the passengers and crew members on board. They included the daughter of Sidney Daniels, a steward promoted from plate washer. After the ship hit the iceberg, he rushed from one first-class cabin to another urging passengers to evacuate. Some took against being given orders by someone of his lowly rank.
Others failed to understand the urgency, and said they would pack their belongings first. Those who did venture out were served drinks and entertained by an orchestra, in what one survivor likened to “a very stupid picnic”.
One man who avoided the tragedy was Francis Browne, a student who photographed the early days of the voyage. Those pictures have been preserved, showing the inside of the gym and a boy playing with his spinning top up on deck. Browne had been given a ticket which took him only as far as Queenstown, where the ship stopped to pick up more passengers.
The film footage showed not the Titanic but her sister ship, the Olympic, on the basis that they were similar in design. It is even possible to step into the Olympic’s first-class lounge: when the ship was decommissioned, the owner of the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick bought the entire room and installed it in his establishment, where it is now the surrounds of a restaurant.