7.30 pm.  Extreme Wales with Richard Parks Part 2/3.  The presenter explores Britain's deepest cave [?] under the Brecon Beacons [OFD?] and attempts to over come his fear oof enclosed spaces. (HD)

OFD is the deepest if you measure depth by vertical range from top to bottom I believe?

I would have thought Yorkshire the land of potholes would have a deeper cave, but I wait to be corrected 

Just watched the program, a case of deja-vue?  I sure I have seen it before.  My only criticism, minimum party for caving is four.  In case of an accident, one person stays with the victim, - sorry casualty and the other two go for help.  If there is a problem, at least one of the two stand a chance of getting to the entrance.

I don't know how big the party actually was - victim, guide, camera crew, out-of-sight backup, etc...  More than 4, I'm sure, although this wasn't made clear on the programme.  And I thought it was a bit bad leaving the poor lad at the sump with the credits rolling and only a few minutes to get back out before call-out time.  I don't think they'd told him about the bottom entrance... 

But generally good and positive, I thought.

Yes - cave depth is measured as the difference between the highest point and the lowest point. For OFD this is virtually the top of the hill and the river giving a total of 308m or 1010 feet in old money.

Three Counties next at 253m then Peak/Speedwell at 248m.

4th deepest is Daren Cilau and 5th is Charterhouse.

My only criticism, minimum party for caving is four.

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Well, a perfectly valid opinion; however, some of my best caving trips have been two-person (advisedly) trips.

Anyway, I thought that the BBC programme was OK; none of the usual hystrionics that you get with telly-caving, and a guy who was prepared to say that he was a bit uneasy about the  trip ? as opposed to the gung-ho bullshit that you sometimes get.

Just watched it.... I thought it was pretty good, certainly one of the better caving programs in recent times. Not too much hyperbole and it put caving in a positive light.

A bit harsh making the newbie carry the bag though and I was a bit shocked when I misheard "growing anxiety" as "groin anxiety" 

I thought it was pretty good.

As an armchair caver I can rate it 10/10.  Got to see some beautiful speleothems on the TV that I would not have seen in real life.

From all the above praise, I'm wondering if I was watching the same program as everyone else.
I was hoping to see OFD (a cave I doubt I'll ever get the chance to experience) in all it's glory.
What I actually got was half an hour of poorly lit footage that I'm sure didn't do the cave justice.

I've watched it on a big widescreen tv and again at work on a pc monitor. Both times had the same results.
Numerous clips of black screen and lots of barely seen, big passage that you only got a feeling for the size due to the echo.
I get that caving is like that (unless you can afford top-end lighting) and it would have been fine to start off that way, to show what it's like. But Gnome Passage was mostly shadow, even when the presenter added an extra few lumens with his LED box. At that point it should have been lit up with something a bit beefier and the rest of the cave filmed likewise.

Ok, so I probably couldn't have done better, but then I'm not putting together a program for prime time television. It wouldn't have needed a fortune spent on lighting to get superb results. If you doubt that, check out the brilliant footage achieved in DYO, Aggy etc.... on youtube, filmed by catchpool1.
If the OFD program had been lit as well as those examples, it would have been a cracker.
I'm afraid that in my opinion this was a missed opportunity.

You're right, cfmwh, about the technical quality; I was referring to the content.

It wasn't up to the cinematic standards of Planet Earth II, but I enjoyed the realism of it. The presenter and camera crew went on a genuine through trip from top to one, which as they said took 15 hrs instead of the usual 5. If they wanted anything more in terms of lighting and fancy-pants camera work, it would have required multiple trips with loads more gear. I think most of us would be pretty disappointed if they'd stitched together clips from several trips into the cave to give the fake impression of a continuous through trip.

I liked Richard Parks as well. A refreshing departure from the standard tv presenter mould.

Yeah, the content was ok. Parks' humility was good to see......a bit like Steve Backshall (and nothing like Cheese Grylls!). I appreciate that they did the through trip in one hit too. I just wish the lighting had been better.

I wouldn't expect a Planet Earth II production, but I stand by my comment that better lighting, for little extra cost, and with no real need for extra manpower, would have resulted in a lot more detail of the cave being seen.

I liked the program - it wasn't really about caving but more about Richard Parkes "journey".  I agree that for a caver the lighting was
poor.

I believe they took better lights in the first day to Gnome passage but it took so long (7hrs!) they decided to
go with much less kit on the through trip.

Nice to see caving on the TV, they should have got the Dudley in to manage the lighting, it was so disappointing to have a decent length programme about caving ruined by the poor filming..

bagpuss said:

Nice to see caving on the TV, they should have got the Dudley in to manage the lighting, it was so disappointing to have a decent length programme about caving ruined by the poor filming..

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You are too kind. I think the team will have to have a go at filming the through trip. Perhaps it could be a project for next year.