Over the next eight years Clark wrote and presented series and one-off programmes on the visual arts, ranging from Caravaggio to Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, Goya, Van Gogh and Picasso, and a co-production for commercial television and the BBC, Royal Palaces.

The series consists of thirteen programmes, each fifty minutes long, written and presented by Clark, covering western European civilisation from the end of the Dark Ages to the early twentieth century.

[8] In this first episode Clark—travelling from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, from the Norway of the Vikings to Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen—tells the story of the Dark Ages, the six centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and “how European thought and art were saved by 'the skin of our teeth'”.

He traces it from its first manifestations in Cluny Abbey to the Basilica of St Denis and finally to its high point, the building of Chartres Cathedral in the early 13th century.

Beginning at a castle in the Loire and then travelling through the hills of Tuscany and Umbria to the cathedral baptistry at Pisa, Clark examines the aspirations and achievements of the later Middle Ages in 14th century France and Italy.

Clark tells of new worlds in space and in a drop of water—worlds that the telescope and microscope revealed—and the new realism in the Dutch paintings of Rembrandt and other artists that took the observation of human character to a new stage of development in the 17th century.

Clark talks of the harmonious flow and complex symmetries of the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart and the reflection of their music in the architecture of the Rococo churches and palaces of Bavaria.

Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity's position as the chief creative force in Western civilisation and ushered in the Romantic movement.

Clark argues that the French Revolution led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the dreary bureaucracies of the 19th century, and he traces the disillusionment of the artists of Romanticism—from Beethoven's music to Byron's poetry, Delacroix's paintings, and Rodin's sculpture.

"[14] There have been complaints in recent times that by focusing on a traditional choice of the great artists over the centuries – all men – Clark had neglected women,[15] and presented "a saga of noble names and sublime objects with little regard for the shaping forces of economics or practical politics".

[17] He commented that his outlook was "nothing striking, nothing original, nothing that could not have been written by an ordinary harmless bourgeois of the later nineteenth century":[18] I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time.

[17]The broadcaster Huw Weldon believed that Civilisation was "a truly great series, a major work ... the first magnum opus attempted and realised in terms of TV.

[21] The British Film Institute notes how Civilisation changed the shape of cultural television, setting the standard for later documentary series, from Alastair Cooke's America (1972) and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (1973) to the present day.

[16] The BBC announced in 2015 that it was to make a ten-episode sequel to Clark's series, to be called Civilisations (plural), with three presenters, Mary Beard, David Olusoga and Simon Schama.