NEW EPISODE of Unfinished London

Hahaha okay I'm glad because I'd have felt sorry for the poor guy. Your dad's costume looked great!

Zachary Decent

Having just finished Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, which has several scenes set on the historical bridge, it's quite cool to get this history! Thanks.

Ben C

Not really. That's my dad.

Jay Foreman

Did you really interview someone from Waterman and Lighterman and ask that question!? If so, what did he reply?

Zachary Decent

He already did "the two Rennies"

Anschel Schaffer-Cohen

Hope that ghost at 1.30 made you a cup of tea....

I love the detail where your reflection nods back at you at 1.30, made me do the biggest double take of my life haha

Fantastic as always. I rarely notice any errors or omissions as I'm a bit thick.

Dungeoneer

Great as always Jay! As you're talking about Old London Bridge being replaced with New London Bridge designed by a father/son team, might there be room for a little gag about Old/New John Rennie?

Alex Mann

I spotted another one: 5:16, there is a double "the" in the Hungerford Railway Bridge text. Edit: Whoops, someone else pointed that out already, but with a wrong time. (I just skimmed through the comments for "5:16" to check for this mistake, therefore I missed the other comment)

Makes complete sense. Thanks for clarifying! :)

Andi Herr

I've noticed those as well, I did wonder if it was a "knowing homage" to old TV!

Every episode of Unfinished London has that. It's called "cue dots". On British TV in the 80s and 90s, they warned you that an ad break was about to start.

Jay Foreman

Aw, thanks Jerry. (That ad, including the song, came to me fully formed in a dream. I can't believe Surfshark keep saying yes!)

Jay Foreman

Hi Andreas. Thanks for being a $5 patron! Because you joined as recently as January 2022, you haven't been charged yet, so that's why your name isn't in the credits. But if payment goes through, you should be in the next video which is due at the end of February. Hope that makes sense! :)

Jay Foreman

Very little is known about the pre-1209 iterations of London Bridge. It is indeed entirely possible that one of them was destroyed by a storm, but we didn't really look into it. This episode (and the other two episodes in the bridge trilogy) were already running really long!

Jay Foreman

The name "Tower Bridge" was mentioned in this scene. We deliberately went into as little detail as possible about Tower Bridge because, as you might have guessed, it's getting heavily featured in a future episode.

Jay Foreman

Read the credits.

Jay Foreman

I use those in every episode of Unfinished London. They're called cue dots. If you grew up watching TV in Britain in the 80s and 90s, you know what they mean.

Jay Foreman

Oops! Well spotted. Going to fix that now! Thanks! :)

Jay Foreman

Thanks so much Sentient! (or should I address you as Meatbag?) All those are really useful and I intend to fix them all this afternoon. :)

Jay Foreman

Aw, short and sweet. The weird artifact in the upper right at 7:16 I presume is a gag I don't get?

Just going to throw it out there, this might the best advert Jay's done, and that includes the time/thyme on your hands one. Well worth the wait for another unfinished London.

Eeee, I feel special for seeing this early. I watched it twice to find any areas for feedback, but I can't think of anything right now. Except, maybe, that I wasn't able to find my name in the credits, but that's nothing to lose sleep over. Good luck with the proper release!!

Andi Herr

That's the old British TV "adverts are about to happen" signal.

I was going to suggest adding the tornado disaster in the SimCity 2000 sequence, since Wikipedia claims one incarnation of London Bridge was destroyed by a tornado in 1091! But looking into it a bit more, I'm not convinced this fact is well sourced. Time to don my wiki editor hat...

6:29. I don't know if it's worth expanding this point, but it's an easy assumption to make that someone might think that Tower Bridge was what he meant. Tower bridge has at least a passing resemblance to the original London Bridge 1.0 (both have lots of sticky-up bits) wheras London Bridge 2.0 is super-flat on top.

Craig P Steffen

I have all kinds of questions about the guy at 4:02. Is he actually anything close to what you're describing him as? What's with the very impressive medal around his neck?

Craig P Steffen

I got confused at 5:31 when you said "London Bridge found itself in a bit of a pickle". I couldn't tell if that was the very original London Bridge (1.0) that was still hanging around after London Bridge (2.0) had been built. At 4:43 you say that "was replaced by New London Bridge". Does replaced mean the new one was built and the old one was then demolished? I guess that's implied by the map. I don't think it's worth messing with audio, but the two times you mention "London Bridge" around 5:31, you might flash up a card that says "*New* London Bridge" or "London Bridge 2.0" or something. That's what you're *showing*, I realize, but still I was stlightly unsure the timeline of the bridges.

Craig P Steffen

At 7:17 there are also small flashing bars in the upper right, for which I don’t see an intentional purpose.

0:30 spells Londinium as Londonium?

15:15: There are two consecutive "the"s ("the the Lovely Golden Jubilee". Don't know if that's a subtle gag or a typo. I'm enjoying reading through the bridge descriptions.

Craig P Steffen

Thanks, Jay, I have been thoroughly informed and entertained. Top notch! I did spot some minor issues in the bit listing all the bridges (starting at 5:12): There's two black dots above the word Westminster. (The whole map is a bit low-res, but that may be harder to fix.) The titles in the top left have red lines in their top left corner. There's no black line connecting the Hungerford cards to the Hungerford bridges. And my most pedantic comment: the blurbs in the top left are inconsistent in their use of spaces after a period. Sometimes there's one, sometimes there's two, with the last card having none at all after the word "history". For shame! None of this detracts from the overall experience, but you DID ask. :)

Sentient Meatbag

I like the gag of "credit cards haven't been invented yet" on the toll sign. I haven't gotten to the end yet; surely somewhere there's a toll-->Troll (treating London bridge as a troll (three billy goats gruff etc) bridge gag.

Craig P Steffen