The Dig: ‘poetic licence aside’

Films about archaeology often feature exotic settings, vine-clad temples (packed with lethal booby-traps), ancient curses, and occasionally wince-inducing approaches to excavation. None of these tropes apply, however, to The Dig, Netflix’s film about the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the determined team of excavators who uncovered its Anglo-Saxon remains in the late 1930s. Photos: Larry Horricks/Netflix. This is no high-octane adventure romp, but a slow, almost meditative period piece that focuses more on the people involved in the investigation and on the looming threat of the Second World War than it does on the astonishing artefacts that were recovered from Suffolk’s sandy soil. Th