I have not seen this particular documentary, but I remember the BBC one on the same subject about 11 years ago which was pretty well ignored/rubbished by the scholarly community.

For what it's worth I am a minister and teach NT periodically at a local college. That does not mean I am necessarily biased - but it does mean I have a certain knowledge about these things.

It has been known for decades that Mary Magdalene was a powerful figure in the early church - indeed, the NT itself implies as much by making her the first witness to the resurrection. She is sometimes referred to as the "apostle to the apostles" because of that - it would have been far more "convenient" to have Peter discover the empty tomb; but the fact that the NT gives Mary Magdalene that honour indicates that she was held in very high regard.

It is also a fact that she was eventually slandered by the church in the late Patristic period - I refer to the works of various "feminist" theologians, especially Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendell who notes that her decline coincides remarkably with the hoisting of Mary mother of Jesus as an "ideal" role model (ie passive and obedient).

In other words, it is hardly new scholarship to recognise that Mary Magdalene was a major player but lost her preeminence. All this can be gleaned from the NT itself and tracing patristic writings. Dan Brown is not responsible for this and I have books on my shelf 20 years old which say much of this.

Now, let me get one thing straight though - almost all the so-called "scriptural" material about Mary Magdalene was NOT "editted" out of the NT (as Dan Brown etc would have you believe). Most of that material is gnostic and considerably (several centuries) later, not to mention distinctly unorthodox. Any serious web site on the Nag Hammadi finds will repay careful reading on this. In short, documentaries/Dan Brown/etc get part of their effect by hoisting the completely false notion that all this is "new" or has been suppressed by some kind of conspiracy. Nonsense and I can give oodles of references to anyone who is interested.

Finally, we live in an age of religious scepticism. This is not necessarily a bad thing - but it does tend to spill out into people/media/etc grasping at the latest straws whether or not they have any real theological merit. I have lost count of the number of alleged "finds" almost all of which turn out to be nonsense (remember the Judas Gospel of just a few months ago, the Bible Codes, etc?)

Get a grip! Jerusalem and the Grassy Knoll are separated by some distance!

Cheers
Mike