A seven-part documentary series by The BBC about seven of the boldest engineering projects from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Archival footage and photographs are used to show the real people, while most of the series is covered by actors with their lines adapted from the records of the day.
The seven parts are in order of transmission and on the DVDs:
- The Great Ship - the Great Eastern
- The Brooklyn Bridge
- Bell Rock Lighthouse
- The Sewer King - the London sewers
- The Panama Canal
- The Line - the American transcontinental railroad
- The Hoover Dam
There is also a companion book for the series which goes into greater detail than the 45-minute episodes of the series allow.
Tropes covered by this work:
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Great Eastern, being the only one of the seven projects for which there was no real demand.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Dr. Thomas Durant in The Line. The book goes into even more detail about his misdeeds.
- Ignored Expert: Dr. John Snow in The Sewer King, who discovered ample evidence that cholera is spread via water, but was dismissed by health officials who believed it was spread via "miasma".
- Legacy Seeker: In The Great Ship, Isambard Kingdom Brunel has already made a name for himself as a brilliant-if-arrogant civil engineer, but with his health beginning to falter, he's become fixated on the idea of leaving "a fitting epitaph" to his career. This leads to him designing the revolutionary steamship Great Eastern as one last hurrah for the history books. Unfortunately, construction is plunged into
Development Hell, forcing Brunel to devote more and more of himself to the project until his finances, reputation, and sanity hang in the balance. After many disasters, Brunel finally manages to launch the ship... only to suffer a stroke minutes before the maiden voyage begins and die in the days that follow. Tragically, the Great Eastern never lives up to Brunel's hopes, being too far ahead of its time to be put to its intended usage, and while Brunel's legacy remains intact, it's still slighted by What Might Have Been. - "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: "This film is based on real events. The words the actors speak are adapted from records of the day."
