ITV 1 - 15th  October, 2008

Exploring a 24-hour day-in-the life of 3 of the Greatest Cities in the World, New York, London and Paris, Griff Rhys Jones is on a mission to find out what props up and forms each city’s key attributes.  He leads us on a journey of rediscovery and of extraordinary surprise behind and inside the familiar.

A visual treat from the outset, Griff finds out what really distinguishes each place by rolling his sleeves up and delving behind the scenes to uncover how the different cities works as living machines.

Armed with his inimitable humour, boundless charm and relentless curiosity, Griff meets characters that epitomise the identity of each city, celebrates their intriguing contributions, and discovers countless astonishing secrets.

NEW YORK

The opening film in this new series, seen through the eyes of Griff Rhys Jones, is a one hour portrait of the extraordinary “city that never sleeps”.  The film focuses on the huge diversity of culture and people that create the vitality of this city of 8.2 million.  The film sets out to look at the iconic, the familiar, the old and the new.  From the start it sets out to entertain, inform and hopefully to shed fresh light on one of the greatest cities in the World.

LONDON

Griff Rhys Jones sets off on a journey of discovery into the secret life of London. Within the space of 24 hours he reveals the surprising, quirky and sometimes humorous stories behind some of the city’s most familiar places. Deep below the city’s streets, Griff is given a private viewing of London’s most unusual real estate: a network of top-secret government tunnels which have recently been put up for sale.

And he rises high in the elevated company of the Avian Police as they patrol their spectacular aerial beat. In the heart of Westminster, he eavesdrops on historic and archaic rituals, still conducted daily by officials who assert their authority by wearing funny clothes. As he gets to grips with the great metropolis, Griff throws himself wholeheartedly into every situation he encounters, trying his hand at being a crane driver, a stockbroker, a Beadle at Burlington Arcade and an auctioneer’s assistant at Sotheby’s.  It’s all in a day’s work for Griff.

PARIS

In the last programme in the series Griff Rhys Jones explores the city that everyone loves, Paris. Small but perfectly formed, Paris is a remarkable city and Griff gets under its skin to find out what makes it so special. Along the way he encounters the hidden, the unknown and the downright bizarre side of the French capital.

Griff discovers that what lies beneath the Eiffel tower is as interesting as the view from the top; that the Opera House supports the producers of some of the finest delicacies in Paris and finally he ends up underground, with a clandestine group of guerrilla architecture restorers who show him parts of Paris few people have ever seen.