Heroes and Villains - Hernan Cortes 1/6

Heroes and Villains - Hernan Cortes Part 1 If you're a lover of 16th-century history, best steer clear of this. A drama documentary is always going to flounder trying to re-create the clash-of-civilisations story of Hernan Cortes's conquest of Mexico - it's on too horrific a scale. (Maybe Hollywood should try.) But at least Brian McCardie's gutsy performance in the Heroes and Villains strand gives us a flavour of what might have driven Cortes - a mixture of piety, dread and sheer, mad-eyed folly. Watching McCardie, hedged with re-enactments and computer effects, you can just about swallow that a deranged adventurer and a handful of men, with no authority from the King of Spain and supplies pinched from the Governor of Cuba, could bring down the Aztec empire, which included a city (Tenochtitlan) bigger than anything in Europe.