Cities of the Underworld

I watched the first season last month on Amazon Prime and I am hooked. I plan to watch the others next. Each episode investigates the underground in one city and adds historical insights. Who knew there was so much under our feet-- be they natural caves, water systems, sewage systems, secret underground meeting places, metro systems, military installations, etc. Truly fascinating. i cant say enough good things about this series.

Rarely does a documentary show something you have never seen before. Almost every episode of "Cities of the Underworld" reveals underground wonders I was unaware existed. Season one was tremendous, covering cities of both the New and Old World. Each episode is set up with a brief history of the region, and the guides are interesting, and informative. As for the hosts, they are not abrasive as some others have claimed, perhaps a little over enthusiastic, but still totally acceptable. I like the way Eric Geller and Don Wildman ask to go beyond the obvious in their explorations. Without question this is the best documentary I have ever seen, and I hope there are many more seasons to come. - MERK

I stumbled over "Cities of the Underworld" while browsing around on Youtube and I was hooked right from the beginning. What a great show this is. Both hosts in my opinion do a really great job by doing their spelunking trips with a lot of fervor and enthusiasm and you can tell the people they talk to are getting excited as well, so their enthusiasm seems to be quite contagious. Some of the scenes are a tad over the top ("We are the first ones going down here, so we do not know what we will see" or the one in Berlin where the host enters for the first time a bunker on his own), but so what, no damage has ever been done by some showmanship. I myself have been in some of the described caves and underground structures and from the few I have seen I have to say that the description given by the host is usually very accurate and reliable; so while it is mainly good fun to watch the show, you might actually learn something from these shows. I can fully recommend this show and I can only express my misery of having not been asked to do this show. I would have done it for free :)

This program has turned out to be a very interesting investigations of the 'secret' underground worlds under many of the largest and most famous cities of the globe, from New York to Budapest, London to Rome.The information is well presented and filmed and your interest is held comfortably for the length of the shows.

My only complaint, and it occurs only occasionally, is that the presenter, Eric Geller, can become overly loud and overly demonstrative when pointing out certain areas or items that, in my opinion, didn't deserve the exaggeration, yet most of the time he is enthusiastic and not as overpowering.

Getting a chance to see underneath some of the world's greatest cities is quite a treat. The shows find everything from mass graves to war bunkers to breweries, and the show gives an interesting insight into things that normally go unseen.

However, the show is difficult to watch due to the narration and the host.

The narrator keeps on labouring certain points over and over again. We know the premise of the show... underground places that aren't common knowledge. However she keeps on making this point. We see something under a train station, and she'll comment about how those in the train station don't know what's going on. Then she repeats this for every location, continually making reference to the people above being oblivious (the host also makes reference to this point a lot). Conversely she says at one point, while under Paris, that's you'd forget that 2 million people are above. Erm, why? We're under Paris and that's the entire point of the episode. Oh, I forget, we're trying to sound mysterious! When water drops from the ceiling, the host makes reference to 21st water dropping down to the 13th century.

Which leads me into Eric Geller, the host, has a similar style of trying to inflate everything. We see some walls made of bones, which themselves are enough to have an impact on the viewer at home without saying much. However we have to have Geller screaming about wildly. "There's bones!" Yes we know. "So many bones!" Yes, we get it. "LOTS of bones!" Be quiet now.

The show could be better if they stuck to the subject content without all the hyperbole. But it feels as if they are worried viewers will get bored, and the only way to keep them involved is by keep on repeating themselves rather loudly.