Troubles made trite

Cheap pop music isn't just potent, it's educational too, and you can learn a great deal about world history by listening carefully to the lyrics.

Who can forget how Boney M distilled the myriad political complexities of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg autocracy into the phrase "Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine, there was a cat that really was gone"?

How Blue Mink offered a brilliant solution to the race riots that were tearing America apart in the late Sixties by suggesting, "What we need is a great big melting pot, big enough to take the world and all it's got, keep it stirring for a hundred years or more, turning out coffee coloured people by the score"?

Or how Abba succinctly encapsulated the epic struggle between Wellington and Napoleon in the words, "Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war.. and how could I ever refuse, I feel like I win when I lose"?

Agnetha included another line in that song ("The history book on the shelf, is always repeating itself ") which never fails to send a chill down my spine. That's partly because she was sharp when she sang it, but mainly because her analysis was spot on, and given the increasing similarities between present-day Iraq and Northern Ireland's recent past, BBC3's new series Conflicts ought to have been a timely commission.

However, last night's history of "The Troubles" in Ulster fell victim to BBC3's patronising belief that the 18-35 age group all have Attention Deficit Disorder (actually, it's the under-fives and over-ninety-fives who suffer most from that), and instead of giving us a clear and simple summary, it began by facetiously promising us "a sideways look at what this troubled part of our country is all about".

But who needs a sideways look at this beautiful but perplexing island, when even a fullfrontal approach is likely to end in confusion, because Ireland has long been a baffling place where there seems to be a problem for every solution?

Fine writer though Rod Liddle undoubtedly is, his half-hour romp through Irish history contained more internal flaws and infuriating inconsistencies than the Good Friday-Agreement.

Flitting confusingly through time and space like a Tardis with a faulty distributor cap and dodgy spark plugs (from the 1960s to the 1690s, then forward to the 1970s, back to 1916, then forward to the 1980s), he initially seemed determined to accompany each archive clip (no matter how brief) with a flip remark and two bars of dated pop music, resulting in a tail-chasing style that was as frenetic as a Tango ad.

The origins of Protestantism were reduced to a shot of Sid James in Tudor clothing and a casual reference to "chicken leg-munching King Henry VIII," while King Billy's victory at the Boyne was glibly summarised as "the future was bright, the future was Orange," and the 1921 partitioning of the island was barely mentioned at all.