YouTube – One Man, One Street, 6 Tonnes of Muck! – Filthy Cities – Episode 1 – BBC Two.
A clip from the last episode.
YouTube – One Man, One Street, 6 Tonnes of Muck! – Filthy Cities – Episode 1 – BBC Two
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011Filthy Cities – Revolutionary Paris
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011From here:
Tue 12 Apr 2011 – 21:00 -BBC 2 (except N. Ireland (Analogue), Wales (Analogue))
Tue 12 Apr 2011 – 21:00 – BBC HD
Wed 13 Apr 2011 – 00:00 – BBC HD
Just 200 years ago, Paris was famously one of the foulest and smelliest cities in Europe. In this programme historian Dan Snow sniffs out the rotten story of the French revolution.
Stunning CGI reveals the stinking streets where ordinary people slaved in toxic industries and suffered grotesque poverty and disease. Dan immerses himself in their world, visiting a perfumer to recreate the stench of the 18th century city – Pong de Paris. He has a go at one of the worst jobs in history – tanning leather by 18th century methods using dog excrement and urine – to make exquisite luxury goods that only the filthy rich could afford.
He gets a rare glimpse of the private rooms of infamous Queen Marie Antoinette at the glittering palace of Versailles and reveals some surprising facts about the royal court. Plus he comes face to face with the ultimate killing machine – the gruesome guillotine. Dan finds out what happened to the thousands of bodies that overflowed in the cemeteries of Paris during The Terror.
Dan discovers how monumental filth and injustice drove Parisians to a bloody revolution which would transform their city and give birth to a new republic.
Filthy Cities – Medieval London
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011From here:
Tues 5th April (that’s TODAY!!!)
9.00pm
BBC 2/BBC HD
Also on:
Weds 6th April – 0.00am – BBC HD
Thurs 7th April – 11.20pm – BBC 2 (England, Scotland, Wales only)
Fri 8th April – 00.20am – BBC2 (Northern Ireland only)
Historian Dan Snow gets down and dirty in Medieval grime to discover the hard way how the London we know was forged in the filth of the 14th century.
State of the art CGI reveals London’s streets as they were 700 years ago and Dan steps into the shoes of a medieval Londoner – wooden platforms designed to help him rise above the disgusting mess underfoot. He spends the night as a medieval muck-raker shifting a staggering six tonnes of excrement, and has a go at medieval butchery to find out what the authorities were up against.
Plus, he examines the remains of a plague victim to discover how a catastrophic epidemic would help a new and cleaner London emerge from the muck of the past.
Click to continue »
Filthy Cities Mini Round-Up
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011Bit slacking on the site LOADS for the last few months, life seems to have gotten in the way, but here’s a mini round up:
- BBC Filthy Cities mini site
- Filthy Graphics – video revealing how the Filthy Cities series was brought to life using computer graphics and special effects.
- Dan Snow’s Dirty Words and Filthy Phrases
Do you have to dodge the contents of bedpans or step over rotting corpses on your way to work? Well, you may have had to if you’d lived in London, New York or Paris back when they were filthy cities. In this immersive new series Dan Snow brings these cities’ stinking histories vividly to life from the bottom up. Taking the travelogue in a whole new direction – with extraordinary, hands-on demos and stunts and revolutionary CGI – he excavates the murky past in gruesome detail during defining periods in history. You’ll find out how each of these modern capitals was forged in the muck of the past, emerging from ‘filthy cities’ into three of the world’s model metropolises.
BBC’s Filthy Cities Airing In Smell-O-Vision
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011From On the Box.com:
The BBC is about to take our nostrils back in time with scratch’n’sniff cards that recreate the whiff of medieval London and revoloutionary Paris, to accompany new documentary Filthy Cities.
The show, presented by Dan Snow, will begin on BBC2 on Tuesday evening, when you can experience first-hand (or nose) the world’s most glamourous cities, back when they weren’t so glamorous.
Writing in the Sun, Dan said: “Ever since our childhood, a waft of a smell can bring back memories and emotions. To be able to trigger that at home through a television show is very exciting.â€
Among the smells of sewage, ‘Pong de Paris’ and an 18th Century Tannery, there’s also the, rather nice, whiff of Marie Antoinette’s perfume. Pick up a scratch-n-sniff card from your local library from today to smell-along with the show.
Forget 3D, it’s all about watching smell-o-vision these days!
Hope you all picked up your scratch-n-sniff card from the Radio Times or local library!
Soldier Challenge
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011Dan took part in the Solider Challenge over the weekend. For more information about it check out the British Forces News website.
Interview with TV Choice Magazine
Written by Rachel on April 5th, 2011From here:
Dan Snow
Filthy Cities
TV historian Dan Snow jokes that his latest project didn’t feel like the easiest way to make a living! Filthy Cities aims to bring to life the stinking histories of London, Paris and New York, with CGI ‘ageing’ the city streets.
Hands-on Dan, 32, goes down into sewers, shovels five tons of horse poo, butchers a pig with a medieval axe, and allows himself to be covered in lice and be bitten by a rat and a leech! TV Choice asks: in heaven’s name why?!
Er, Dan, what an unusual idea for a programme…
“It’s a rancid idea! But I’ve always been interested in waste and our society. Basically, human beings create the seeds of our own destruction. Our waste has the capacity to destroy us, and that’s quite a weird idea, really. We can only really live in these big cities because we’ve worked out ways to get rid of this waste, and so I wanted to go back and look at the medieval city, the early modern city and the very modern city to see how we’ve overcome these giant problems.”
The first programme looks at London. What was it like in medieval times?
“London was particularly bad. They had to put all the muck in carts and take it out to the fields, they’d chop up animals and empty the entrails into the Thames, which became one vast sewer. And, of course people would wash in the Thames and they’d get cholera. Conditions were unspeakably horrible.”
You actually stand in London’s River Fleet, which some people won’t know about.
“Yes, the river’s still there, it’s just confined into a tiny little sewer underground now. The thing about the Fleet is that it got so choked up with sewage that it actually stopped running as a river. Newgate Prison was there, and the smell and the disease were so unbelievably bad that medieval Londoners started worrying about the health of the prisoners!”
Was it difficult getting permission from city councils for some of the stunts in the series?
“It was a heck of a series to work on. You can imagine how hard it is to get five tons of horse manure dumped on a busy City of London street, or how to get the New York council to put a 6ft high block of frozen horse poo on the street to show what it would have been like in winter in the 19th century! But I was learning new stuff endlessly, it was absolutely fascinating.”
But didn’t you baulk at some of the things the producers got you to do, like being bitten by a rat?
“I baulked at everything, really! I went into a flat in New York where a mentally ill woman had shut herself in for 30 years, and the flat was full of human waste and rats and lice and all sorts of nasty things. So that was very unpleasant.”
Martina Fowler
Filthy Cities – Medieval London
Written by Rachel on March 21st, 2011From here (will be airing in the week starting 2nd April):
Historian Dan Snow takes viewers on a unique journey through the squalid grime of the past in this new, three-part series which uncovers the filthy histories of three of the world’s leading modern cities: London, Paris and New York.
Dan begins by visiting 14th-century London, lifting the lid on the untold story of the city’s fetid past.
Dan gets down and dirty in medieval grime to discover the hard way how the London we know today was forged in the filth of the 14th century.
CGI peels back the layers of London’s streets and, as they are revealed as they were 700 years ago, Dan steps into the shoes of a medieval Londoner – with wooden platforms designed to help him rise above the disgusting mess underfoot. He also spends the night as a medieval muck-raker, shifting six tonnes of filth and excrement, and even has a go at medieval butchery.
In his quest to immerse himself in all things medieval Dan also investigates the remains of a plague victim, and learns how the catastrophic Black Death epidemic helped a cleaner London emerge from the muck of the past.
Viewers can press the red button or visit bbc.co.uk/filthycities to unearth extra filthy footage and join Dan on his journey. Viewers can also experience the real smell of history for themselves with special scratch-and-sniff cards available in libraries – more information is available via the website.
Exciting Dan News
Written by Rachel on November 29th, 2010I know it’s been fairly quiet on all fronts on the site for the last few months – life’s caught up with me and most of my web-based projects have been sadly neglected – but the latest Dan Snow news is worth breaking radio silence, at least for this one post!
From Wales Online:
Television presenter Dan Snow has married the Duke of Westminster’s daughter, Lady Edwina Grosvenor, in a ceremony in Liverpool.
Lady Edwina, whose father is one of the country’s richest men and owns large parts of central London, met Snow two years ago.
A statement released by the couple said: “Neither of us has ever wanted a big white wedding and we are delighted that we have been free to plan a simple and relaxed wedding exactly as we wished with our families around us.â€
The wedding was held at Bishop’s Lodge in Woolton, Liverpool, on Saturday and the ceremony was conducted by Bishop of Liverpool James Jones.
Snow is the son of BBC journalist Peter Snow and has made a series of history shows with his father.
Congratulations to the happy couple!
Edit [02/12/10]: Some more info for those of you that are interested.
Brief interview with Dan and Edwina
Short article about the wedding
Dan Snow’s Norman Walks
Written by Rachel on August 16th, 2010From bbc.co.uk:
Yorkshire – the Northern Abbeys
10.00pm Wednesday 18th August 2010 BBC4
1.30am Thursday 19th August 2010 BBC4
3.30am Thursday 19th August 2010 BBC4
11.30pm Thursday 19th August 2010 BBC4
As part of the BBC’s Norman season, historian Dan Snow puts his walking boots on and sets off to see what the great British landscape can teach us about our Norman predecessors. From their violent arrival on these shores, to their most sustaining legacies, Dan’s three walks follow an evolutionary path through the Normans’ era from invasion, to conquest, to successful rule and colonization.
On the Sussex coast, along the Welsh border and on the edge of the North York Moors, Dan explores the landscape and whatever evidence might remain – earthmounds, changing coastlines, viewpoints, and the giant stone castles and buildings that were the great symbol of Norman rule. All these elements offer clues as to how the Norman elite were ultimately able to dominate and rule our Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
As Dan discovers, there are a great many unknowns about events in 1066 and thereafter. But one thing is clear – wherever they went, the varied British landscape and its diverse people offered a fresh challenge to the Normans.
Dan’s final walk takes him north, to lands brutally devastated by the Normans four years after the Invasion. But the genocide of the Harrying of the North campaign was the final act that brought the whole of England under Norman control. The walk explores how the area became the setting for one of the Normans’ greatest legacies – the abbeys and monasteries of northern England.
From Helmsley Castle to Rievaulx Abbey, Dan investigates how one local lord established an institution that would revolutionise the community and commerce of the moors. With numerous similar abbeys the ambitious Normans would create a new era that defined northern England throughout the Middle Ages.
Click to continue »