Season 1

For the past hundred years the British have looked on their industrial landscape as something devoid of beauty. Ian Nairn believes that because of this attitude we are missing some of the most spectacular grandeur in Britain.

Ian Nairn tries to analyse the unique appeal of Liverpool and shows that it lies as much in its people as in its magnificent civic buildings.

The rest of Britain looks at Comwall from the complacency of a deck-chair and through the tinted lenses of its sunglasses. Ian Nairn believes that the real nature of the county is industrial rather than tourist and that it is in danger of becoming, apart from brief summer months, a ghetto for the retired and elderly.

Eventually one in ten Scotsmen will be living in a new town. The pattern of the urban living in the future is taking shape in Scotland now. Ian Nairn takes a critical look at Scotland's most famous new town - Cumbernauld.

Ian Nairn believes that when new towns go wrong it's usually because they have been planned without flair or imagination. For him the planner is more important than the architect, and he looks at Gordon Cullen's plans for the Welsh hill town of Llantrisant.

Most drinkers are unanimous in their preference for Victorian city pubs or rural inns instead of the chrome and plate-glass of the modern pub. Ian Nairn shows that it is possible to build a good modern pub or successfully modernise an older one.