Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture [2008]

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Customer reviews

review by: gadfly date: 2008-07-30 rating:
buildings for living and dying
This is two DVD's of 400 minutes total,not 3 as in product description and is Dan in a different hat, literally than in Around the World in 80 Treasures, with much the same perpective, in fact there seems more architecture in the 80 treasures. Dan loves humanity although he does not like environmental destruction and pollution which of course are inevitable when billions of human beings start a bonfire from the Devil's own emissions, as he sees in Baku, or is this fire temple in the 80 treasures. The organisation of Adventures is thematic such as Beauty, Dreams, Death, Disaster. The DVD producers should identify the four locations in each episode to allow easier access as they did in 80 Treasures. The 1000 minutes should be required viewing for anyone over 35 at least once per year.

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review by: date: 2008-06-04 rating:
Missing footage
Like Mr Tobin, I was disappointed to find that much of the original series footage is missing. Eight one-hour episodes have been condensed into about 400 minutes. The DVD case even shows a small photo taken inside the ossuary chamber in the Czech Republic, but the footage for this building has been omitted!

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review by: date: 2008-05-28 rating:
Could have been better
Personally I was less struck by this series- it seems a second go at the material covered in "Around the World in 80 Treasures"- just released and well worth purchasing.

Dan Cruickshank is as engaging as ever, but for the most part, I wouldn't wish to personally visit most of the places in this particular series. The themes of the programme are fairly loose and, based on the title, I was hoping for a more in depth discussion of the, well actual architecture. Still worth a look if you missed the series on TV.

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review by: JT123 date: 2008-05-22 rating:
BBC DVD have ruined a classic series
I am a huge fan of Dan Cruikshank and loved watching this series on the TV. I jumped at the chance to buy it on dvd and rewatch it. What a disappointment. On the back of the dvd case a notice reads 'for contractual reasons certain edits have been made.' Usually this means that music has been redubbed or some short scenes have had to be snipped. In this case it means that up to 15 minutes have been cut from some episodes. Gone from the final episode is the segment on Pompeii and other episodes miss some of my favourite settings. Why have they done this? I think it may have something to do with the heavy use of John Williams' music throughout the series in the soundtrack. If this is the case then the soundtrack could be redubbed and the episodes left intact. I will think twice before buying any more dvds produced by 2entertain for the BBC. I haven't seen a hatchet job like this since the early days of VHS.


review by: date: 2008-05-03 rating:
Adventures in ancient religious monuments, mostly
This series has been badly titled, to my mind. It is not so much "Adventures in Architecture" as "Mostly Visits to Historical Religious sites" with Dan Cruckshank. Dan dashes around the world, wearing his hat and scarf, saying `golly' a lot, generally being over-awed by some large, ancient religious buildings and shrines and occasionally acting a little bit brusquely, or awkwardly toward his hosts - generally through lots of bowing and saying "very good" to people speaking languages at him that he clearly has no understanding of.

Sometimes, Dan himself seems to completely forget what the series is called - easy to do given the content - and gets involved in a Hindu festival or visits an old Indian woman in her `dying chamber' in Varanesi. The thing is, Dan's an historian, not an architect, so you get a fair bit of history and not a lot of architectural comment. His love of the past is particularly evidenced in his visit to Dresden where he commends the faithful reconstruction of the historic centre destroyed by Allied bombing in WW2, replacing some `inappropriate' - to use his description - Modernist buildings which have emerged since the end of the war. A true engagement with architecture would be less automatically dismissive of Modern architecture when pitted against ancient monuments.

Another attack on Modernism comes when Dan visits Brasilia and witnesses the inequality there. There are a few comments how "most people don't like Modernism". I get the impression that Dan may be being a little anachronistic here, but that's not surprising, he's getting on himself in years, and he's an historian. I would have hoped Dan would have recognised that urban planning is a tough nut to crack, and even his beloved ancient sites are so loved and habituated because of the passage of 1,000s of years.

It is disappointing that the series did not give more time to secular architecture or non-monumental architecture - the world is full of fantastic vernacular architecture which, if Dan is unwilling to engage with the contemporary, he could have brought some of his insight into the background to everyday, folk architecture which can be just as engaging, or often more so - than a ruined temple or a remote Siberian church.

My final gripe is also relating to the title of each episodes - Beauty, Death, Paradise, Disaster, Connections - again, all very loose and nebulous and arguably frequently interchangeable given the content of each show. Its almost like the crew went around the world, filmed some interesting stuff, then had a brainstorm at the BBC afterwards to decide which footage should go into which episode and thereby fashion a series out of it, rather than consciously thinking up decent themes in advance and then actually going out and finding the most appropriate material for that episode. It could have benefitted from more coherence.

Against this, there are some wonderful visits to buildings you would never likely get to see inside, and the occasional non-religious visit -San Francisco with City Hall on Springs, the new bridge with its sacrificial steel `fuses". And the visit to the remote minaret in Afghanistan is something else! After a lot of monumental religious focus in the first three or four episodes, the series does seem to be evolving into a broader view of architecture for its final two episodes, so its worth sticking with. 7/10

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