Abandoned Engineering

Abandoned Engineering had the potential to be a really interesting series about historical ruins and places of interest. Unfortunately the presentation is so bad it's practically unwatchable.

There's a constant backing track of "mood music" which is usually heavy on percussion. This often drowns out the voiceover, which switches between loud and quiet depending on the scene. It's all quite distracting.

Just as bad is the input from the narrator and many of the specialists, whose vocabulary mostly consists of melodramatic comments such as "almost alien", "something bad must have happened here", and similar inanities. With the honourable exeption of Roma Agrawal, who comes over very well, the presenters are all rather odd characters. There's the one with the intent, bulgy eyes, the one with the slow, mangled syllables, the slightly awestruck American... after not very long, it just grates. Too much gee-whizzery all round, I'm afraid.

This is a good series but could be so much better. I've bought books on ruins and abandoned buildings so I was really looking forward to the series. The stories are always interesting, some remarkable, but the style of production is so annoying, the equivalent of finger nails scratching a blackboard! I'm now at the point where I now don't bother watching. The fake suspense about the actual previous use of the building is so annoying and having studio based experts pretending they've actually been there instead of being shown a few seconds video and given information just doesn't work. The programme should stick to the local based guides who are far more effective and cut out the fake suspense.

The subjects are potentially very interesting, the format is just painful. Rather than clearly explain the structure, it jumps to a series of 'experts' who have clearly never been there, but read some scripts. It takes three or four disconnected 'experts' to read the story. I know its a cheap way to do it but if you can't afford to send people there, just get one to read it out.

Excellent series which takes you around the world to places you would be very lucky to see. Abandoned ships, power stations, sites of massive world war 1 and 2 guns, prisons in the most unlikely places, roads and bridges constructed decades ago and long forgotten. But more than this, each constructions raison d'être and why they fell into disrepair. The subjects are explained thoroughly by experts in their field with cinematic footage illustrating their stories. Who is aware that the Spanish built a massive railway station in Canfranc in the Pyrenees in 1928, 790 feet long - the second largest station in Europe in an art deco style - truly a grand sight - now left to rack and ruin. A real eye opener and very addictive.

I love this show. Beautiful places captured in great ways on camera with just enough background info.

Unfortunately this show isn't available anywhere! It was on discovery channel for some time, but unavailable online. I missed quite s lot of episodes and can't watch them.... shame!