You are not logged in
International
EPISODE GUIDE
Episode 1
Designer and architectural journalist Kevin McCloud (Grand Designs) kicks off this new series by tackling the Forth Bridge as only the famed painters have done before.
Painting the Forth Bridge may be the stuff of modern legend but what’s it really like to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of this engineering miracle? Designed by John Fowler and Benjamin Baker at the end of the 19th century, the bridge has become a much-loved symbol of Scotland, even though the building of it claimed 60 lives. And it continues to dominate the lives of people who live nearby and work on its steel frame.
Kevin braves the raw Scottish winds to climb from sea level to summit. Along the way, he meets some of the characters associated with it, including George, who used to paint the bridge the old-fashioned way; Ralph who keeps it spick and span using new methods; and Betty, whose life was changed by the bridge when both her husband and son died working on it.
Episode 2
Logic says the spire of Salisbury Cathedral should have fallen down before it was even completed but it’s still there and, 700 years later, Kevin McCloud is going to climb - through 14th century scaffolding and over crumbling, eroded stone - to the very tip. A waterlogged site and just four feet of foundations don’t seem the ideal conditions for building a 404-foot spire - the tallest ever constructed at the time. Today, the enormous structure still stands on gravel and water; shored up by metalwork added as early as the 14th century. Kevin’s climb - the highest in the series - is made more difficult by crumbling stonework, eroded by acid rain.
On his journey up the cathedral walls and then the spire, Kevin finds out who built it, what drove them and how they achieved such an enormous feat of engineering, with no history or experience of building on this scale. Kevin’s mettle is tested to the limit in this programme. His perilous journey to the cathedral’s topmost point is made even more difficult by the winds that blow at 404 feet above the ground. After the final few feet, he is left clinging to the cross and the aircraft warning light that sit atop a spire that technically cannot stand up.
Episode 3
Kevin travels to Cheshire to climb to the very top of the massive Jodrell Bank radio telescope. In this programme, he finds out how the 250-foot futuristic structure, which played a crucial role in the 1960s space race, came to be built in the middle of the English countryside.
As he clambers up the 2,000 tones of riveted steel girders, he finds how Jodrell Bank’s unique engineering led to this quiet spot in Cheshire becoming central to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although it was only intended to stand for 15 years, it’s still going strong 40 years on and is now tuned in to far galaxies in the hope of detecting extra-terrestrial life. Kevin talks to the man behind the telescope, Bernard Lovell, and examines the structure at close hand as he walks across the dish itself and even climbs to the very tip of the telescope as it strains to pick up messages from outer space.
Episode 4
The Lloyds building has become one of the ultimate icons of the 80s. But the highly traditional institution of Lloyds took a big gamble when it commissioned avant-guarde architect Richard Rogers to build its new headquarters. Kevin scales the building inside and out to find out why it looks as it does - and whether it really works for the Lloyds employees.
How did the experimental building come to be completed - way over budget? And can the 80s icon survive as a practical and relevant building in the 21st century?
Episode 5
Kevin McCloud travels to Liverpool to climb to the top of the city’s monumental Anglican cathedral. The gothic tour de force was not completed until 1978 - 75 years after it was begun and 17 years after the death of Giles Gilbert Scott, the man who made the building his life’s work. The Anglican cathedral was intended to reflect the riches and stature of the second wealthiest city in the British Empire.
