My year with the tribe review: bitter tribes and angry bribes

However there has always been a moment on the horizon when the see-saw would tip and films would shift from charting the first moments to the last. MY YEAR WITH THE TRIBE (Sunday, BBC 2) -

an excellent short series from Will Millard and Keo Films - came to a close last night, in more ways than one. Initially, as Will returned for a last visit to his friends among the Korowai

people of West Papua, there was a kind of end-of-term feeling. The bleak village, into which increasing numbers of these hunter-gatherer people were being corralled by the Indonesian

government, was empty as everyone had returned to the forest for a massive tribal jamboree. Amid the dancing and feasting it looked like nothing could go wrong. After the party, though, Will

began to detect something worrying about his friend and guide August. Having earned cash by working for the film crew, August had splurged on the trappings of the new economy. He had

handfuls of disposable lighters and a phone he could not call anyone on. Now he wanted Will to buy him a boat. The demands went from wheedling to insistent, from angry to violent as the

price went up in tandem. Will retreated into the forests for a last visit to August's adoptive family, Haup and Halap, who clung to a gentler, older way of being. They were physically

frail and mentally troubled, too, talking of the bad spirits that inhabit the forest floor but unable to climb back into their tree houses. It seemed as if they might wither away, taking the

last bits of Korowai tradition with them. Meanwhile back in the village, Will and his team were essentially shaken down for every last bit of cash before they were permitted to leave. It

was a classic example, as he said, of the observer changing the thing he has come to observe. He and his crew could not go to these forlorn villages and then not employ the locals. At the

same time, the locals could not help but rely on the money. It seemed a sad, bitter end to Millard's adventures among the Korowai and perhaps to the Korowai themselves. Apparently there

is a street in Norwich, that bears the title of Britain's most Tudor street. I no more know what this means than I know what BRITAIN'S MOST HISTORIC TOWNS (Sunday, C4) have to do

to qualify as historic. Empty phrases aside, Professor Alice Roberts showed us a Tudor Norwich teeming with wealth, upheaval and outside influences. Closer to the Dutch coast than West

London, Norwich was a second Amsterdam, where newly rich cloth merchants built their houses by the canals their money flowed in on. Weavers from the Low Countries flowed in, too, bringing

new techniques and exotic tastes from further east. The Dutch weavers also gave Norwich FC its nickname. Canaries were a mainstay of the weavers' workplace, singing in competition with

the looms, way before the transistor radio. And there was me thinking the Canaries' moniker had something to do with that other, famous Norwich business and its bright yellow product -

mustard.