Never mind the title, Marc Fennell won’t say if stuff in Stuff the British Stole should be returned.

Documentary filmmaker Marc Fennell insists he aims to stay impartial with his ABC series Stuff the British Stole.

Despite a fairly loaded title, Fennell has found there can be legitimate arguments as to why some of history’s greatest artefacts have found homes outside of their homeland.

One popular theory is that some historians and archaeologists rightly believed they were saving relics from destruction and preserving them for generations.

“It’s a totally valid point of view. It really is,” he tells TV Tonight.

“For some of these objects, there are really strong arguments for people trying to justify what was taken, people trying to explain the context.

“There’s no one-size-fits all. But what I will say is, it’s just important that we weigh that up against the other side as well and then the audience can make up their mind.

“You can decide”

“People often ask me what I think should happen with objects, and I’m like, ‘It’s not my job to have an opinion on whether these objects stay where they are or go home.’ It is my job to show you as much as we can, what we know about how it got there, then you can decide.'”

Season Two of the Australian / Canadian co-production based on his podcast, begins with
an investigation into arguably the most controversial museum display in Britain, the Parthenon Marbles. Legendary Stephen Fry even features, conceding that his country should return the relics to Greece.

According to Fennell the famed campaign to return the Marbles began with Greek-Australian resident Emanuel Comino.

“One of the things that always struck me about the Parthenon is that the feeling’s very strong in the diaspora, and not just in Australia, but in America and Canada and places like that. It’s a very strong cultural issue that runs through this very wide diaspora around the world. I thought it was worth making that diaspora part of that story, as well. As much as it was important to have Greeks in Greece and British people in Britain, it was a genuinely interesting Australian connection,” he explains.

“I don’t like shoehorning Australian connections in there if they don’t actually make sense. But that one actually was quite legitimate.

“The biggest surprises and the bigger twists and the more exciting stories come next”

“The Parthenon makes sense as the first episode, but the biggest surprises and the bigger twists and the more exciting stories come next, when we’re often doing stuff that people haven’t heard of.”

Filming took place across 11 different countries, from Egyptian deserts to the Amazon River and takes viewers from a shipwreck in the depths of the Aegean Sea to a robot laboratory high in a Tuscan mountain range.

“In Egypt, I crushed my ankle”

“I tried to not film any longer than four week blocks. But it’s huge and there’s all the things that come with travelling overseas. In Egypt, I crushed my ankle. If you watch the second episode you can spot the shots where I’m limping, or trying to hide it!” Fennell insists.

“But there’s so many moving parts to international filming, and you do occasionally forget to absorb the incredibleness. When we were filming in Egypt, they literally shut down a section of the Nile for us to film. If you want to do a drone shot, you have to use the intelligence services drone guy -this young guy who rocks up with aviator sunglasses. He films you, and then you wait 24 hours, and he gives you the footage after it’s been signed off by the intelligence services.”

Fennell also varies the storytelling style to match the subject at hand. Whilst the Egyptian episode leans into the pyramids and Egyptology, a later episode in Ireland draws upon a different screen genre.

“I wanted it to feel like a British crime drama, with the blues and the cliffs and things like that. You want to leverage off this iconography that people know, to then show them the history that they don’t,” he continues.

“I’ve joked for years, it’s ‘Indiana Jones in reverse'”

“I’ve joked for years, it’s ‘Indiana Jones in reverse.’ He goes around the world and says, ‘It belongs in a museum’. I come on and go, ‘Does it?’ But when you’re actually filming it, bouncing from country to country you do feel like you are on a bit of an adventure. I hope that some of that comes through.”

As Stephen Fry suggests, it must be time that museums of the world acknowledge their role in changing history.

“Museums fail when they don’t tell the story properly. And part of the story is they themselves have become part of the story,” says Fry.

It’s an argument which has given Fennell a premise for his show’s entire existence.

“It’s sort of a reaction to the inadequacy of museum plaques,” he agrees.

“If they held the more complete ‘grey areas’, the show probably wouldn’t need to exist.”

Stuff the British Stole screens 8pm Mondays on ABC (all episodes on iview).