Miniseries

Episodes • 2007

Jonathan Meades
Father to the Man

1. Father to the Man

50 min

In the first episode of a five-part series, Jonathan Meades revisits the places his father (a biscuit rep) took him to as a child, in order to shed some light on his abiding obsession with buildings and places.

Watch Episode
On The Brandwagon

2. On The Brandwagon

50 min

Jonathan Meades ponders the effects of the expensive craze of city regeneration and using 'landmark' buildings to get it.

Watch Episode
The Case of the Disappearing Architect

3. The Case of the Disappearing Architect

50 min

Jonathan Meades investigates the short and lustrous career of that most mysterious of High Victorian architects, Cuthbert Brodrick. Briefly the most celebrated architect in Britain after designing Leeds Town Hall, he went on to spend almost half a century of willed obscurity in Paris

Watch Episode
Heaven: Folkwoven in England

4. Heaven: Folkwoven in England

50 min

Jonathan Meades tells the story of Letchworth, the first British garden city. A social experiment, its legacy is Britain's ubiquitous, banal sprawl. Yet it all started so charmingly with naked dew-bathers, vegetarian mystics and sandal-makers roaming through Hertfordshire clay fields.

Watch Episode
Stowe - Reading a Garden

5. Stowe - Reading a Garden

50 min

Jonathan Meades visits Stowe - the greatest of Enlightenment landscapes, an enclosed world of the utmost pomp. Its gardens, lakes, woods and, above all, follies are to be interpreted by those with a grasp of the classics to which they refer.

Watch Episode