National Geographic has released "Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston", a three-part documentary series pairing the "Loki" actor with historians, archaeologists and disaster experts to reconstruct the final hours of Pompeii before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The show blends scripted drama and time-travel devices reminiscent of Hiddleston's Marvel role with traditional documentary interviews, an unusual hybrid format its makers hope will draw younger, more casual viewers who might otherwise avoid conventional history documentaries.

Created by Hiddleston and executive producer Kevin R. Wright, who previously worked together on "Loki", the series casts Hiddleston as a "Time Detective" who moves between the present-day ruins and a recreation of Pompeii built on a stage in Malta. Across the episodes he follows three real historical figures caught in the disaster: a teenage bronzesmith apprentice named Avianius, bathhouse owner Julia Felix, and an unnamed Praetorian guard. Showrunner Tom Barbor-Might said mixing dramatic and documentary techniques was a deliberate attempt to appeal to "highly cineliterate" young audiences, while Hiddleston, who studied Classics at Cambridge and first visited Pompeii as a 17-year-old in 1998, drew on his own habit of visualising ancient texts as film.