London's latest Tut show rises above its commercial roots

I was so sceptical about the current Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery that I almost didn't go.

The last time a much-hyped bunch of the supposed treasures of Egypt's best known pharaoh turned up in London (2007/08) I spent a fortune and trekked across town to a temporary exhibition space in the 02 to be distinctly underwhelmed. I was so unimpressed with the lacklustre assembly of artefacts that I didn't even bother to write a blog article about it (though you can read The Guardian's brutal assessment here.) A huge advertising campaign promised wonder on par with the famous exhibition in the '70s. The reality was just a handful of golden treasures, a lot of secondary pieces related to Tut's ancestry and a strangely industrial exhibition space that looked like you were viewing a display in a shopping mall. Turns out the Cairo museum was desperate to raise cash for a new wing and had dreamed up the uninspiring road show in an attempt to fleece punters who couldn't make it to Egypt. You could see better stuff for free in the British Museum.

Would I fall for the same bait-and-switch tactics twice? At first, I refused. Though the setting is marginally more cultural (the Saatchi Gallery rather than the completely commercial O2) than the last outing, the ticket prices are even more eye-watering. Peak time tickets ... the weekends and evenings most of the population would want to go ... are an astounding £28.50 for adults. That's 30% to 50% more than the typical blockbuster museum show. Rather than being academically curated, it's produced by IMG, the famous events management group. Tickets are handled through Ticketmaster (who will charge you more than £3 extra for the privilege of booking in advance). There are six other corporate sponsors. Advertising is prolific. It felt more like a rock concert than a cultural experience. A friend of mine with solid Egyptian cultural creds rubbished it as "a star vehicle for Zahi Hawass", the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs with a Hollywood star's flair for self-promotion.

But then I found myself with a day off in London on a gloomy weekday. There was nothing else that interested me on the cultural scene at the moment other than the British Museum's Troy exhibition, which I'd already seen (and reviewed here).  I could take advantage of the "off peak" walk up tickets for £25. Two weeks earlier we'd put a deposit down on a 2021 Nile excursion with the show's lead sponsor, Viking Cruises. It seemed foolishly stubborn to deny the opportunity.

I'm so glad I ignored my fears. Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh is an excellent show that delivers enough awe to merit its pricey entrance fee, and has enough intellectual heft to be worthy of the British Museum. The motivation is the same as the 2008 debacle ... raising money for the new museum building now set to open later this year ... but the implementation is vastly different. There are 150 treasures on display here, and while they don't include the iconic funerary mask there's enough gold, furniture, statuary and burial objects to drop your jaw repeatedly. Unable to completely eschew bait-and-switch, organisers do imply the golden mask is here; they're actually showing a close up of a gold and inlaid enamel miniature coffin used to store the preserved body's vital organs. It's a wonder on its own.  Indeed, there's enough here that I found myself pondering if visitors to the current Tut displays in the Cairo museum felt cheated by what was out on the latest world tour. But it turns out Howard Carter excavated more than 5,000 objects out of Tut's tomb. Impressive as these items are, they're a fraction of the total.

The show is cleverly divided between floors. On the ground level you meet Tut himself, understand his journey through the afterlife and end in a room that evokes the burial chamber, where a replica mummy is dressed with and surrounded by the funerary amulets and jewellery that would protect the king on his journey. Upstairs galleries bring the story into our own time, explaining how Carter found the tomb, what the excavations were like and the impact "Tutmania" had on modern life. Several pieces on display here are potent reminders of the inspiration the Art Deco movement took from Carter's discoveries. The show ends with the most recent, high-tech analysis into Tut's fate, then brings you face-to-face with a colossus statue of the king in his own cavernous gallery complete with sound and light effects.

So what does moving culture from the hands of museum curators to those of international event producers, and charging punters %30 over the odds, get you? Crowd management is excellent. There's a beautiful intro video on a wrap-around screen that starts your experience, but also controls the flow of visitors by creating a 5-minute break before introducing each new group. Many of the items are in display cases that can be walked around on all sides, all of them on at least three, giving plenty of room for gawping. There's a generous amount of space between displays and ... most critically ... many cases tower up to the ceiling, where their upper levels contain video screens that show what's below and tell you about it. Meaning that while you're queuing up to take a look you're preparing yourself for what you're about to see. Undoubtably it also means most people won't spend as much time in front of objects as they don't have to read the descriptions while they stand there.

The labels are a masterpiece of clear communication; someone has put a lot of effort into great storytelling that gives enough detail but doesn't stray into boring academia. The lighting is fantastic, low in the galleries overall but with sensitive spotlights throwing object detail into high relief. I didn't have to reach for my reading glasses once which ... for a woman of a certain age ... is saying a lot. There are high-tech cut-away diagrams, short films and interesting lighting effects such as a 3-D projection of the ostrich feathers that would have emerged from a dazzling fan base, or another inviting you down the stairs to the tomb. There's atmospheric, new age-style music throughout. Most proper art critics hate this, but I think it adds to the atmosphere. These are the kinds of multi-media effects that are popping up increasingly in museum exhibitions, but they're usually deployed sparingly. This show lays them on thickly, throughout.

The road show stars been carefully curated. Everything has been cleaned and restored to such an extent that most of it looks like it was made last year rather than 3000+ years ago. Gold glistens. Wood glows. Pottery glazes gleam. Game pieces sit on a board that seems as if it's just been temporarily abandoned. The king's bed lacks only a mattress to put it back into bling-y service. There isn't a chest, vase or ornament here I wouldn't happily accept into my own home. (Well, maybe not the bed.) Those Egyptians had taste.

The result of this careful curation is that there are few incidentals on display here. Just about every item in every case could be a masterpiece on its own, and rewards careful study. It's hard to pick favourites in such an all-star lineup, though I was particularly captivated by the realism of the animal forms: a lizard curled at the joint of an alabaster vase and stand, almost invisible; the faience lion's head on the tips of the king's bow case; another snarling feline at the prow of his hunting skiff; a noble falcon sporting the sun disc on his head.

Other stand-outs for me included an exquisite pen case in an inlaid tube carved to look like an ornate column,

the small ebony-and-ivory inlaid throne that emphasised just how little Tut was when he took the throne

and a wooden model of the boy king in his sarcophagus that practically breathed with life.

And while that gold and enamel viscera case might not be the famous mask, it is an astonishing treasure, sensitively displayed so you can inspect its mind-boggling detail front, back, inside and out.

There are places where the crass consumerism still shines through. The amusement-park style queuing outside the building and again once you've entered but are waiting to start viewing artefacts, is frustrating when you've paid such a premium to get in. Both were blessedly empty when I attended, suggesting that the whole thing's been over-hyped. The fun fair continues in queue two, where you pass through a photo station where a photographer takes a shot of you and your party against a green screen. Later on in the gift shop you can super-impose yourself in front of your choice of ancient Egyptian backgrounds to make it look like you went to the source. And that's just the start of the most over-the-top gift shop I've ever seen associated with a cultural exhibition.

There are two enormous rooms low on educational content and high on the cheap and tawdry. There are pharaonic mask hoods for your next costume outing and sunglasses with a kingly-crown if you want to look the part next summer. There's a whole range of tee shirts and sportswear. Row after row of reproductions beckon; less the tasteful stuff you're likely to find in the British Museum and more of the made-in-China stuff I imagine Cairo street vendors flog tourists for whatever coins they can bargain out of them. There were a handful of lovely things and an attractive, accessible exhibition catalogue, but they were eclipsed by an array you'd imagine finding if you just came out of the Egyptian Adventure ride at Disney. Frankly, I'm surprised there wasn't a Lego tomb set. If you were escorting kids here, this is all probably great fun ... though how you'd afford to buy them any of this tat after the cost of the tickets and London travel, who knows. For me, as the daughter of an art historian who spent part of her career working in museums, it was a hideous and tacky devaluing of a show that, otherwise, was top notch.

Tut's London visit is worth your time and investment, but try to get there on a weekday and skip through that gift shop fast.