Jonathan Meades - Television Work

Television Work

He is well known to British television audiences for his series about architecture Abroad in Britain and its sequels Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades, Even Further Abroad With Jonathan Meades, Abroad Again in Britain and Abroad Again. These innovative, "slightly bonkers" documentaries look at neglected forms of British architecture such as caravan parks and golf courses, and at the place that famous buildings hold in the British popular imagination. Meades's television work also includes two separate one-off documentaries about the architectural legacy of both the Third Reich, Jerry Building, and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Joe Building.

Meades also wrote and presented a documentary called Surreal Film (2001) for BBC Two (although the onscreen title was "tvSSFBM EHKL", the words encoded in appropriately surreal fashion), which sought to expound on surrealism in a manner that fitted the subject. Perhaps inevitably, given Meades' approach and his choice of topic, some found it bewildering and often psychedelic. However, it was nevertheless distinctive and humorous in a field often populated only by de rigueur and comme il faut offerings.

Jonathan Meades : Abroad Again in Britain was shown on BBC Two in May 2007. It is a sequel to his 1990s series exploring British architecture. The film examines Salisbury Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, Cragside, Brighton Pavilion and Portsmouth Dockyard. It uses his familiar style of jaunty camera angles often showing him from behind, going down escalators, sitting on walls or even not at all as he is walking away from the camera. He talks directly to the camera and often his speeches are split up from different angles or positions. There are times of silence or with only music where shots of the building he is talking about are shown. Equally he often uses scathing remarks to criticise other buildings such as an occasion when he refers to the Millennium Dome as a "Museum of Toxic Waste".

In 2008 a two-part documentary, Magnetic North, was screened by BBC Four. In the programme, Meades celebrates the culture of Northern Europe, and wonders why the North suffers in the English popular imagination compared to the South. Meades travelled through the slag heaps of northern France, Belgian cities and to the redlight district of Hamburg, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places in which he finds himself. The programme features the expected stylistic flourishes and quirks of presentation now associated with him. It was subsequently re-edited into four half-hour episodes and shown on BBC Two. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, James Walton praised the programme as "Sparkling, thought-provoking, constantly challenging the accepted view, Meades seemed at times inspired, at others deranged. The only thing he never was, thank heaven, was obvious."

A 9-DVD box set collecting his various Abroad... series was due for release in April 2008 but was then reduced to a 3-Disc "Best of..." due to licensing problems/expense of the music used in the programmes.

In 2009, Meades toured Scotland in a three part BBC Scotland series Off Kilter. He visited the Granite City (Aberdeen), the Isle of Rust (Lewis and Harris) and a number of less-renowned Scottish footballing towns, guided by his "Scotnav". Meades contributes to the United Kingdom edition of The Huffington Post.

In 2012, BBC4 screened Jonathan Meades on France, a series in which Meades visits what he calls his "second country". The first episode ("Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia") focuses on the Lorraine region which is evoked through a miscellany of words starting with the letter V. The aim is to "explain why, although close to its eastern border, it has become the symbolic, or even mystical, heart of France and a stronghold of a romantic nationalism that is also expressed by such diverse means as typography, music, engineering, exquisite urbanism and, above all, a sensitivity to Germany's proximity." The second episode was entitled "A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries" and focuses on Frenchness and its major traits. "Just a Few Debts France Owes to America" is the title of the third episode. Meades's book 'Museum Without Walls' was published on the Unbound crowd-funding site, in both print and e-book editions.