Cities of the Underworld: The Complete Season One & Two (8-Disc Set) [DVD]

As entertainment I've given it four stars though some episodes wain a little in terms of interest, I think there will be some part of quite a lot of watchers that want more in depth knowledge about the locations, archeology and history, and you might want to consider reading more in depth afterward.

The presentation is well... you know... Discovery Channel so expect it to be overly dramatic, but you can't have someone talking about how amazing, exciting and historically important a concrete room full of broken walls is without a little drama; its that Time Team syndrome, unless your a pottery shard loving nerd, a lump of brown broken pot is not going to float your boat, someone has to chuck on some music and tell you its a first century amphora that once held the head of a roman gladiator or something, or you'll be snoring and drooling on the remote.
The program also suffers in transfer because it was designed to fit around endless adverts, so it can seem a bit choppy.
The CGI mostly is good quality and sometimes its vital as your imagination will need some awesome help envisioning some of these places as being anything other than smelly damp tunnels full of spiders or bats.

But honestly you could forgive all that easily just for the opportunity to see places you're never likely to ever see any other way being either too dangerous, sealed off or forbidden to tourists... Well that and being knee deep in effluent, there kudos goes to the presenters I mean seriously it would take a six foot deep block of cash in front of me before I wandered in some of those places...

It is worth mentioning there is a lot of hours watching here... 8 disks with up to four episodes a disk, it will wear thin watching them back to back, so I'd recommend dipping in and out.

I rarely watch tv these days, having little patience for advertising, so when a series happens along that interests me I tend to go for the dvd. In this case, I saw a trailer on the internet and the price for the set was actually less than renting the discs, so I went for it. I have a fascination with things underground, so I was eager to see the hidden treasures this had to offer. But while I was not at all disappointed with the subject matter, I have to say there was a lot about the programme which was disappointing. The two seasons in this set cover a lot of territory, from the more well known (Hitler's bunker) to the seriously obscure (the subterranean world of pagan Turkey), and manage to fit in quite a few surprises. But the style of the show lets it down. Obviously it was made to fit the requirements of television, each episode split into ten-minute chunks to allow for advert breaks, and each segment starting with a precis of the past one. This makes it seem choppy and repetitive when viewed on dvd without advert breaks. The direction and camerawork also favour a lot of rapid jumps, peculiar angles and rapid movement, which adds to the jerky, disjointed feel of the show. And the narration is often over-simplistic and patronising. The extras were actually much more enjoyable viewing, since they told a story smoothly and without excess of stylistic tricks. I don't regret buying this, since I had over 17 hours of viewing, much of it giving me a fascinating glimpse of our subterranean past, but I think it's a pity that the director allowed the ADD generation to dictate the presentation of material which deserved a much more leisurely approach.

This show is fantastic and amazes me that places like this exist underground. Especially places from 1000 of years ago. I did rate this 4 out of 5 stars as there a few episodes that are stretched out as not much is known about the group/or people from cults ie: the Freemasons episode. Most of the bits mentioned were all speculation and nothings to prove or back the claims and was a bit boring after a few minutes, so I admit I skipped the rest. Another thing this series lacks is subtitles. I happen to have 30% hearing and I have trouble understanding foreign accents. I even had a tough time understanding the presenter at times as he pronounces things differently to English but it's not a major problem. Other than those two things that bothered me, I recommend this to anyone how is keen on history or seeing old monuments, often unseen by the public.