MeadesShrine Most of Jonathan Meades's films are available to watch on Vimeo thanks to the efforts of an unknown fan. They can be found here, now featuring new higher-quality uploads.

Mass Tourism: The Architecture of Franco’s Spain (2019)

Jonathan Meades on Jargon

 'It’s meant to provoke, and does. It’s also blisteringly brutal, clever and hilarious. Meades is a rare thing on television: properly different.' Sam Wollaston, The Guardian
Rachel Cooke, New Statesman
'... a blazing reminder that there is no more compelling TV spectacle than a single person facing a camera with something meaningful to say and the rhetorical firepower with which to illuminate it. Sometimes, words are better than pictures.'  Liam Fay, The Sunday Times, Ireland edition

Benbuilding - Mussolini, Monuments, Modernism and Marble (2016)

First Hitler, then Stalin, now Mussolini. Here Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome.

Bunkers, Brutalism, Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry (2014)
Jonathan in Concrete Poetry
2 x 1 hour films. Read more about them here.

'Meades is fast, splenetic and brilliant.' Andrew Billen, The Times
'Provocative, opinionated, allusive, variously heretical and revisionist, Jonathan Meades is the antithesis of the apologetic orthodoxy of BBC cultural output.' Martin Hoyle, Financial Times
'A beautiful paean to concrete and scale and ambition, to architecture as art.'
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

The Joy of Essex (2013)
No bling, no geezers; rather a journey through a county of one-offs - social reform experiments, architectural oddities, early-adopters of temperance.

'Meades doesn't seek to be a figure of authority. His judgments are not so much magisterial as provocative.' The Guardian
'Packed full of challenging ideas, withering judgments, ideas, words. The whole thing is brilliant to listen to, as well as to look at.' Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Jonathan Meades On France (2012)

Jonathan with a mini Tour Eiffel
1. Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia
A V to V journey through Alsace
2. A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries Tyrannical dynasties and political murders
3. Just a Few Debts France Owes to America 'Go home yankee - but take me with you'

'It became evident that this would be a landmark series from the moment Meades began to speak.' Clive James, The Daily Telegraph
One of the few really distinctive stylists we have left on television.' Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent


 Off-Kilter (2009)

1. Aberdeen
Brand-new 300-year-old buildings in the granite city
2. The Isle of Rust Lewis and Harris, where cars go to die
3. Footballs Coupons Towns Brought to you by ScotNav

‘Meades dances through the made landscape with a mercurial brilliance. He is the civic David Attenborough or a tour guide for Martians.' A.A. Gill, The Sunday Times
'A masterpiece.' Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph
'By furlongs the most erudite broadcaster of the age.' Will Buckley, The Observer

Magnetic North (2008)

1. Flanders to Hamburg
2. The Hansa Cities
3. Gdansk to Tallinn
4. Helsinki

'An intellectual confidence and a sense of mischief you won’t find anywhere else on TV. Meades is an artist of television.’ Robert Hanks, The Independent
'Meades is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly in today's landscape of banality-spouting identikit presenters.' Tim Teeman, The Times

DVD cover

Magnetic North is included on The Jonathan Meades Collection DVD, available to buy here.

Abroad Again (2007)

1. On the Brandwagon: The Regeneration Racket
'The first serious critique of the logic and aesthetics of Blairbuilding.' Owen Hatherley, London Review of Books
2. The Case of the Missing Architect: Cuthbert Brodrick
3. Stowe: Reading a Garden
4. Heaven Folkwoven in England: Garden Cities and their Legacy
5. Father to the Man: Architectural Autobiography

'Sturdily indifferent to formal conventions and prone to eccentric grace-notes.' Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
Joe-Building: The Stalin Heritage Trail (2006)

 St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow

Abroad Again in Britain (2005)

1. Salisbury Cathedral
2. Brighton Pavilion
3. Portsmouth Dockyard and Defences
4. Cragside
5. Edinburgh Castle

Meades Eats (2003)

Meades Eats... fish and chips

1. Fast Food
2. An A-Z of the Gastronomic Revolution
3. Whose Food

'Undeniably the best gastronomic series of the year.' Victor Lewis-Smith, Evening Standard
'I don't know how these programmes get past the BBC's health inspectors - but I'm glad they do.' Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

tv-SSFBM: Surreal Film (2001)

Well surreal

'The great glory of Meades's television work is his unwillingness to submit to the simplifying pressures of the medium, to adapt his style for the thickoes who are usually assumed to make up the audience.' Robert Hanks, The Independent
Pevsner: The Man and his Reputation (2001)
Victoria Died in 1901 and is Still Alive Today  (2001)

Jonathan Meades and Queen Victoria
featuring Christopher Biggins as the Queen

'Marion and Geoff aside, the only other thing on television that I will watch is Jonathan Meades. His programme on Victorians was wonderful.' Piers Gough, interviewed in The Times

Travels with Pevsner: Worcestershire (1998)
Heart Bypass: Birmingham (1998)

Even Further Abroad (1997)
'A characteristic blend of metaphysics and small-ads grot.' Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

1. Double Dutch: The Fens
2. The Absentee Landlord: Postwar Churches
3. Nag, Nag, Nag: Newmarket
4. When the World was Modern: Big Tech of the 60s

5. Full Metal Carapace: The World of Caravans

J'accuse: Vegetarians (1995)

Vanbrugh in Dorset (1995)

Jerry-Building: Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany (1994)
'Meades wore, presumably to get into the mood, what could only have been Goering's demob suit.' A.A. Gill, The Sunday Times
Further Abroad (1994)

1. The Truth About Porkies: Where Pigs Live
2. Get High: The Perilous Attractions of Vertigo
3. Where the Other Half Lives: The Architecture of Beer
4. Belgium: Magritte was a Social Realist
'Fat bloke goes to Belgium. Who cares?' Gary Bushell, The Sun
5. Middlebow-on-Tee: The Landscape and Society of Golf

Abroad in Britain (1991)

1. Severn Heaven: Brummies Bodge Shacks
2. Right is Wrong: The Utopian Avoidance of Right Angles
3. House Ahoy: The Land and Water of the Solent
4. Brick and Mortars: Martial Architecture

5. In Search of Bohemia: Artists' Architecture
'He is well informed and torrentially articulate.' Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian
Marsh Court (1988)

The Victorian House (1987)
A six-part series for Channel 4