Original release 21 octobre 2004
Previous episode S2004E08 - Led Zeppelin
Number S2004E09
Episode runtime 45 minutes
Country United States
Original language English
Genres Documentary, History
External links TheTVDB page
IMDB page
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Last update 8 novembre 2026 - 04:15
on 11 databases

Jackson Pollock

1 member

American painter who was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, an art movement characterized by the free-associative gestures in paint sometimes referred to as “action painting.” During his lifetime he received widespread publicity and serious recognition for the radical poured, or “drip,” technique he used to create his major works. Among his contemporaries, he was respected for his deeply personal and totally uncompromising commitment to the art of painting. His work and example had enormous influence on them and on many subsequent art movements in the United States. He is also one of the first American painters to be recognized during his lifetime and after as a peer of 20th-century European masters of modern art.

BetaSeries' opinion

Secrets d'histoire Season 20 Finale: Stéphane Bern's Messalina Episode Ends a Season About Reputations on Trial

Twenty seasons in, "Secrets d'histoire" can still surprise its audience. The Season 20 finale aired on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at 9:10 p.m. on France 3, and Stéphane Bern closed the season with one of the most notorious women of antiquity: Messalina, the third wife of Emperor Claudius. If you watched it, you already know it was more than a parade of Roman scandal. It was a careful re-examination of a woman whose name has been shorthand for depravity for almost two thousand years. If you haven't caught up yet, this debrief shows why the episode, and the whole season, deserves a place in your watchlist.

A finale that puts history's verdict on trial

The question at the centre of the finale was simple: does Messalina deserve the brutal nickname history gave her? Roman writers handed down a woman driven by insatiable desire and a hunger for power. Bern's team took that portrait apart piece by piece. They asked who wrote the story, why they wrote it, and what they gained from it. This is the series at its best. It doesn't simply retell a legend. It looks into how the legend was made. Messalina's world gave the episode plenty of drama: Caligula, Nero, Agrippina and the freedman Narcissus all appear, each with their own agenda in the deadly politics of the Julio-Claudian court. Without spoiling anything for latecomers, the finale's real emotional pull comes from the gap between the caricature and the young woman caught up in a machine much bigger than she was.

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