Do you have to dodge the contents of bedpans or step over rotting corpses on your way to work? Well, you may have had to if you'd lived in London, New York or Paris when they were filthy cities. Historian Dan Snow presents this immersive three-part series, which brings these cities' stinking histories vividly to life. Taking the travelogue in a whole new direction—with extraordinary, hands-on demos and stunts—it excavates the murky past in gruesome detail during defining periods in history. You'll find out how each of these modern capitals was forged in the muck of the past, emerging from 'filthy cities' into three of the world's model metropolises.
Episode 2: "Revolutionary Paris" airs Wednesday, Jan. 20 at 10 p.m. - Just 200 years ago Paris was famously one of the foulest and smelliest cities in Europe. In this program historian Dan Snow sniffs out the rotten story of the French revolution. Stunning CGI reveals the stinking streets where ordinary people slaved in toxic industries and suffered grotesque poverty and disease. Dan immerses himself in their world, visiting a perfumer to recreate the stench of the 18th century city - Pong de Paris. He has a go at one of the worst jobs in history—tanning leather by 18th century methods using dog poo and urine—to make exquisite luxury goods that only the filthy rich could afford.
He gets a rare glimpse of the private rooms of infamous Queen Marie Antoinette at the glittering palace of Versailles to reveal some surprising facts about the royal court. And he comes face to face with the ultimate killing machine - the gruesome guillotine, and finds out what happened to the thousands of bodies that overflowed in the cemeteries of Paris during The Terror. All to discover how monumental filth and injustice drove Parisians to a bloody revolution would transform their city and give birth to a new republic.
"Industrial New York" airs Wednesday, Jan. 27 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV.
Historian Dan Snow is on Facebook, Instagram and you can follow @thehistoryguy on Twitter.
FILTHY CITIES is a BBC/Discovery co-production.
