Is it appropriate to ask questions about the historicity of movies/TV series here?

Question

Would this site be a good place to ask a question like:

How does [insert movie title or TV series title/episode] diverge from the true historical account?

In some cases, I can see this sort of question being rather broad, but without knowing the history, it may be difficult to ask something more specific.

Did XYZ event happen as portrayed in [movie/TV series]?

Would be possible, but asking about an event or detail that was omitted will be very difficult for someone who doesn't already know the historical event. Is there room for questions like this here? And if so, how should they be framed?

Answer 1

I don't have much experience on history.SE, but from general Stack Exchange knowledge -

Both examples are definitely too open-ended. The second one might be possible to make workable by adding more specific detail.

I guess the more specific the question, the better its chances - "Did the romans really build their Aquaeducts from x material using y for transportation as depicted in Richard Harris' novel Pompeii?" is specifically answerable. But "How does Robert Harris' novel Pompeii diverge from the historical account?" would require writing a whole book. Over on SO, we close this kind of stuff as "not a real question".

Answer 2

Ok first I had to look up historicity, nice one that and very apt.

Problem I have with this is that considering most of the movies made about "historical events" or placed "in the past" you could pretty much find from a small amount to a great deal that is incorrect. I think most of the time you would just get answers that pretty much say "yes, X was wrong in Y and here is why". I'm not sure what value that adds to the site since we want questions about historical events, not dramatic interpretations of them.

Personally I loved the Sharpe seried by Bernard Cornwell, they were great and made me feel like I was in the era many times, yet about 75% of it was accurate. The rest was all drama/fiction made for entertainment but that's ok, it's why I read them. I could say the same about the Cadfael novels as well, or many of the historical fiction I have read, movies would just end up in the same vein.