Greatest Cities of the World with Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones gets under the skin of three of the greatest cities on earth for a new three-part documentary series.

Exploring a day-in-the-life of New York, London and Paris, Griff paints a landmark portrait of each metropolis revealing what gives each city its unique identity.

From serving breakfast in New York, to late night dinner in Paris, and beer in London, Griff gets stuck into the daily life of these cities. He works with garbage men in New York, gives a cut and blow dry to a poodle in Paris and tries his hand at bell ringing in London.

What really makes New York, New York? Griff finds out by rolling his sleeves up and delving behind the scenes, uncovering how the different cities work as living machines, and discovering some astonishing secrets.

Armed with his trademark humour and relentless curiosity, Griff tracks down the individuals who epitomise the character of each city, and celebrates the infinite variety of life in these great cities.


Programme One: New York

Over the past 100 years, a child has been born, on average, every four and a half minutes in New York. What sort of place have they arrived in?

In an attempt to find out what makes New York, New York, Griff spends a typical 24 hours meeting New Yorkers, discovering the city’s secrets, experiencing its culture and diversity and trying to understand what makes New York a great city.

From meeting the man whose job it is to hoist more than 70 American flags across the city every morning, to the birth of a baby late at night, Griff uncovers some moving and fascinating stories about New York.

In Brooklyn, a Greek family runs a thriving business, serving the best New York breakfasts, and Griff tries his hand at waiting on the hungry clientele at their busiest time. The menu is extensive and Griff has to get to grips with the “extremes of carbohydrate, fat and sugar that an American in New York can eat for breakfast”

As the morning rush hour reaches its fevered pitch, Griff visits Grand Central Station, described by Griff as more like a temple than a terminal. 700,000 people pass through the main concourse every day, the equivalent of the entire population of San Francisco. Grand Central Station has some fascinating secrets and Griff discovers why in one part of the station the public can be seen talking to the walls.

It’s time to get his hands dirty with the New York Sanitation Department, an organization run along military lines. After helping them for a short while he soon realizes why they are known as ‘New York’s Strongest’.

New York is famous for its skyscrapers and Griff explains that in the early part of the 20th century tycoons battled to build the highest buildings in New York. The Woolworth Tower was a prime example, built in 1913 and paid for in cash by Frank W Woolworth. He wanted it to be the tallest building in the world, and especially taller than the Metropolitan Life Insurance building because they had once refused him a mortgage.

In a city of towering buildings, window cleaners are a special breed, and Griff joins veteran cleaners Brent and Vincent at the top of a 30 story building, and climbs over the edge, attached to safety ropes in order to clean the windows. His confidence is not boosted when Brent and Vincent can’t seem to agree how the equipment works. This was, Griff says, “the single most terrifying experience of my life”.

New York is a city of contrasts, and after visiting the Carlyle Hotel where a suite costs over $7,000 a night Griff travels across town to the Lincoln Correctional Facility where long term prisoners come to serve out the last few years of their sentences and are taught how to adapt to normal life again.

In Queens, Griff visits a factory founded over a 150 years ago that employs 450 people to make exactly the same thing that they first manufactured in 1853, Steinway pianos. Before each piano passes out of the factory it has to pass the ear of one man, Wally, the most critical cog in the whole machine. Although Wally has worked at Steinway for 45 years, and carries out the crucial final tuning on the instrument, he only learnt to play the piano four years ago.

James Allen has invented an inspired way of raising funds for a rehab centre in the city. He brought together a group of addicts to form a choir in Harlem. Griff asks if he could audition for the choir and has to sing in front of all the members. He launches into an interesting version of Amazing Grace, but is swiftly halted by James, who advises Griff to carry on with the day job. In an emotionally charged performance the choir sings ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. A visibly moved Griff describes sitting in the midst of a “waterfall of voices” as “a profound experience for me.”

As day turns to night, Griff goes backstage at a glitzy Broadway production, and then falls into step with a herd of Indian elephants from the Barnum Circus being escorted out of town en route to their next gig.

New York is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in the world, and it has been estimated that a third of New Yorkers were not actually born in the city.

On any weekend more than a thousand weddings take place in New York, yet curiously in this great melting pot, most marriages are between couples from the same background.

Griff is invited to attend a traditional Russian Jewish wedding and meets the family and friends who have made New York their home. As the celebration gets wilder and the vodka flows, Griff leaves for his final appointment.

It’s 3am and Griff is waiting at the Morgan Stanley children’s hospital to meet someone who is taking his time in arriving. Finally, the latest addition to the city makes his appearance. Born to Peruvian parents, Ivan is the first in their family to be a native New Yorker.

As the new day starts to break over the city, Griff wonders what New York will be like as Ivan grows up, and expects that like millions of others he will find that change and continuous invention are part of the excitement of this remarkable city.

Last edited: Wednesday, 24 September 2008