Filthy Cities, BBC Two

Dan Snow traces New York's rise from sewer to penthouse

by Adam SweetingTuesday, 19 April 2011

Dan Snow: TV's enthusiastic filthmeister

Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in regaling us with tales of death, disease and raw capitalism at its baby-eating worst.

New York evolved from satanic swamp, where butchers sold rotting meat cured with borax and clothing dye, to thrusting turbo-metropolis

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