Let's be realistic.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I sat riveted throughout most of the programmes. Granted I did find Mr. Cruickshanks whispering a bit tiresome at times, but then I'm a bit deaf. I have a hearing aid, but I can't stand wearing it. One thing, either Mr. Cruickshanks or his researchers didn't to their homework was his visit to the Summer Palace in Beijing. The Yiheyuan, the Summer Palace he visited, wasn't destroyed by Anglo-French forces. It was the Mingheyuan - the one that contained remarkable buildings done in the European style. However, I relished Mr. Cruikshanks' comment about how frustrating it is to deal with Chinese officials. I bet when the powers-that-be in Beijing watched this series, the veins on their foreheads must have practically exploded with rage. Here is a top-notch series showing the treasures of the world. Most officials and governments allowed the BBC easy access, but no, some asinine official in Beijing, did his utmost to deprive the BBC of this courtesy. In the end, he cut off his nose to spite his face; this in a world where face is everything.

Is this some kind of surreal joke? A clueless, maladroit windbag tours "his" selection of world "treasures" and is locked out, finds the treasure invisible in mist or bestows such comments as "absolutely stunning" (on the Easter Island statues!) while endlessly complaining about scheduling problems. World civilisation is here made stupendously dull presented by someone who achieves the difficult feat of being extremely superficial and tediously rambling at the same time while being apparently unable to get off-screen long enough for viewers actually to see or appreciate the "treasures" he is so earnestly and witlessly wheezing about. So shallow and brief is the treatment of each treasure here that if you blink, you will miss one or two -- but, sadly, you will not escape the whittering of the truly appalling Dan Cruikshank whose confidence in his own narrow and banal "Little England" aesthetic judgements is such that he needs no actual expertise in casting his pearls before us. This seems to be the same absurd Cruikshank who had a tiny flash of fame with his extravagant, apparently unsubstantiated claims downplaying the scale of the looting of the Baghdad Museum, asserting that the Museum was a legitimate military target and charging that the looting was "an inside job". (Not very surprisingly, Iraq does not figure as a location for any of these treasures.) In short, this bloke seems to be a rather irritating idiot and, putting it kindly, not exactly authentic in his excessively self-conscious eccentricity. Watch this at your own risk -- good earplugs or "MUTE" would certainly help. Highly recommended for gullible people with absolutely no prior knowledge of history or culture or anyone who is interested in seeing how very low the BBC documentary has now fallen.

Visually, the series was very impressive. But sadly, it was let down by the choice of presenter, whose over-affable, opinionated and affected style (reminiscent of Peter Snow) seems a good example of the BBC's dumbing down of otherwise interesting programmes.given the limited time devoted to the subject matter, there was a little too much padding in the form of self-praise for embarking om such an enterprise. Constant stressing of time constraints seemed to ignore the fact that these were largely self-imposed. Better preparation by the BBC's own staff on the spot might haver avoided embarrassing gaps like the treasures of the Forbidden Palace. But turn the sound down and you have a visual feast.

The presenter may at first sight appear a bizarre character, just listen to him and you won't find it hard to believe my (if you haven't yet enjoined his previous productions) that he constituently proved his worth as an exceptionally knowledgeable expert on architecture and art in general, from all periods, as well as the bigger -cultural and general- picture of historical context. Here the lucky devil is allowed to travel from country to country (several are providing more then one stop) in pursuit of 80 exceptional works of art, all of which he selected as personal favorites for various reasons, which are usually well explained, although the format simply does not allow for anything like the thoroughness he usually displays in other, much more specific BBC series. Still, a remarkable combination of obvious musts and far less known choices, some of which are likely to be intriguing discoveries for most of you, as they were for me. As usual, he BBC provides reliable quality - I doubt whether anyone can challenge any fact (appreciation as such is of course to subjective ever to be 'reliable'). The enviable perk of a dream tour around the world is not wasted on such an exceptional connoisseur and born story teller - if only other stations could learn from the BBC how to pull of such stunts with panache and hardly ever failing success!