From David Starkey's tales of monarchy to Peter and Dan Snow's battlefield walks, it's hard to escape our past. Suits me – we can't live by celebrity chefs and makeover experts alone.

Historical reconstructions are the in thing right now. Who wants a boring old presenter in lecturer mode when we can have under-employed actors mincing about in ruffs and pointy hats?

That lot haven't a chance once we get to the 20th century though. You can't move for archive footage, something BBC4's 1968 documentary exploited to great effect on Monday.

The 40th anniversary of that troubled year has prompted a tide of retrospective programmes.

This is mostly because the student class of '68 now runs the media and can't resist the chance to get all nostalgic. Still, there was a fair bit going on back then and it had a pretty cool soundtrack.

So this 90-minute film in the ever-reliable Storyville strand gives us B52s dropping bombs and spraying poison, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, students setting Paris alight and Soviet tanks on the streets of Prague.

It's almost all in colour and much of it still shocks.

TV made it seem as if violence, oppression and destruction were everywhere. Living through that time, it must have felt as if nothing would ever be the same again.

But we're all still here.

The horrors of Vietnam neither ended the Cold War nor damaged US power. Rioting students didn't bring down De Gaulle, Franco or anyone else.

Soviet force put Czechoslovakian dreams of freedom on hold, but they got there eventually.

In the end 1968 told us a lot about how TV covered major world events. But what did it all mean?

I'm none the wiser.

There weren't many historical answers in 1968, but expect the editor of Private Eye to do better next week in another BBC4 programme, Ian Hislop Goes Off The Rails (Thursday October 2).

The nation's chief satirist looks at the legacy of the 1963 Beeching report, which led to the loss of 2,000 stations as well as lines all over the country.

A familiar story of public service cuts then.

Memo to BBC: can I make a documentary about Labour's ruthless Post Office closures in 40 years time?