Climbing Great Buildings : ITV1

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Hesham Al-Rousan

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What is it with presenters and harnesses and climbing ropes?
Even seventy year-old David Dimbleby was at it in one of his programmes.
This could have been so much better without the ropes and with more content.

Fred Dibnah did something similar more comprehensively and his feet never left the ground.

This was a waste of half an hour.
 
Can't help thinking the female character was completely devoid of any charisma and I learnt very little from it, about history, architecture or construction.

Fred Dibnah's programmes on castles and cathedrals would blow this out of the water.
 
Sorry, yes I got the channel wrong.

That makes it worse, as the BBC has covered a lot of this ground before, more comprehensively.

Maybe they thought having those presenting "hanging from ropes" would interest younger viewers. But it's still comes under the category, "presenters doin' stuff" as far as I'm concerned and just made the programme more irritating.

The excitement they show over much of the stuff they "find" makes me often think that they must be the only ones who've not seen it before.
 
Personally I think it's excellent. I thought the bit yesterday when he was climbing the tower and the bells chimed was really funny as he clearly wasn't expecting it.
May possibly have been more at home on BBC4 but I have an interest in medieval architecture (purely amateur - not geeky) and have visited several of the sites so it ticked all the right boxes for me.
 
It's the whole rope thing I find strange about this programme. There maybe some good architecture but it would look just a good with a zoomed in camera than having a couple of twits swinging about on ropes all over it. Who knows maybe they may go into the history books if the buildings start to develop damage in a few hundred years as a tour guide in 2110 saying this crack was caused by a couple making a programme for the BBC in 2010.
 
I may well be wrong but in the McCloud prog he actually climbed the buildings, with ropes for safety, whereas here, they just shimmy up ropes using the modern-day equivalent of a prussic loop. (Trellick Tower excepted, as that's just sheer concrete)
Based on that, I'd agree with the poster above.
 
That's right, in McCloud's series he certainly did climb the buildings but was of course roped on for safety.

In climbing terms, the new series is a cop out - I guess it's being done this way either for the dreaded health & safety reasons, or to prevent damage to the buildings.

If you can find it, watch McCloud's series - it's much better.
 
Exactly!

It's not climbing as such, more hauling themselves up on ropes that have been previously dropped down by someone either "using the stairs" or using a "cherry picker" in the internal scenes and attaching the ropes to fixings.

Are we supposed to be impressed?

Most of what they are showing could be achieved by just using a zoom lens from a suitable vantage point.


What next?

A bit of tight-rope walking, or splitting slates on the end of a rope?
 
No. It's not. The climbing aspect is a pure gimmick, as is the bimbo/thickie who accompanies the presenter on his 'climbs' and whose sole contribution seems to be saying 'wow!', 'cool!', 'wow!' as often as possible. I watched the episode on Durham and Lincoln as I love ecclesiastical architecture but decided to skip the rest as it was dumb and boring.

The same person (I'm sick of the sight of him by now) currently presents the Great Buildings of the North (or whatever it's called) on BBC4. It's much more interesting.
 
Kevin McCloud's UK Superstructures

Wednesday 15th September
12:00pm - Forth Bridge
12:30pm - Salisbury Cathedral

Thursday 16th September
12:00pm - Jodrell Bank
12:30pm - Lloyd's Building

Friday 17th September
12:00pm - Liverpool Cathedral
12:30pm - Trellick Tower

Showing on Discovery Science (Sky 524, Virgin 219). All episodes are also available one hour later on Discovery Science +1 (Sky 549).
 
Nice find, but worth pointing out that due to the need to squeeze in some adverts and trailers the Discovery broadcasts have a few minutes removed from each episode.

That aside, still well worth watching. :)
 
I think the woman is particularly uncharismatic. The guy's getting all excited about something or other, and she's all "yeah... yeah... yeah" in a really bored voice. After I started counting how many times she did it, it made the programme a lot more entertaining.
 
I've been enjoying this programme, I don't think it matters that they're just dangling on ropes and not actually doing much climbing etc, it's interesting to get their perspective on actually being up there rather just the camera zooming in on things.

The only thing that's spoiled my enjoyment (as others have mentioned) is the constant "wow", "awesome" and "cool" from "Luce" every programme.
 
She irritated me more than him when I started but now I despise both of them! She's clearly there as 'viewer/thicko' to act as a foil for the eternally knowledgeable Foyle to patronise at whim. And the Lloyd's building is hideous.
 
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