The Guardian's television critic reviews *Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston*, a National Geographic documentary launching on Disney+ this Thursday, which explores the AD79 eruption of Vesuvius and its destruction of Pompeii. Hiddleston, who holds a double first in classics, hosts the series alongside academic experts, blending investigative presenting with dramatised reconstructions to challenge the popular assumption that the disaster struck instantly, instead showing it unfolded over roughly a day, giving residents time to make fateful choices.

The review is mixed on tone: Hiddleston's on-screen scripted banter with specialists is described as occasionally cringeworthy and smug, including a gimmick where he "throws" data into the air like an Avengers film, and his freeze-frame "rewind" device for revisiting evidence. However, the dramatised segments depicting three ordinary Romans during the eruption, written by Jessica Ruston and Mark Ravenhill, are praised as the show's strongest element, described as elegiac, moving and evocative of a war-zone disaster film.