TV, FILM & RADIO

What lies beneath

The Dig / on limited cinema release, then streaming on Netflix from Friday 29 January

The discovery, in 1939, of a lavish Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo remains one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries ever made in the UK. Here, in Suffolk countryside, was uncovered the ghostly outline of a ship, preserved even though most of the original timber had long since rotted away. There were also artefacts of such magnificence that it’s long been supposed this must have been a royal grave, perhaps that of King Rædwald of East Anglia (c599-c624).

But how did archaeologists come to be working at the site? It’s a story retold by director Simon Stone, albeit with no little dramatic licence, in , which begins with well-to-do Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) employing Basil