Jump London on Channel 4 tonight was full of spectacular moments, but not the spectacular moments the filmmakers had hoped, I thought.

The format was – introduce “Le Parkour” or freerunning, with a brief history, then buildup to a set of freerunning pieces across major London monuments.

The potted history of Le Parkour was good – best I’ve seen in a mainstream programme, starting from the schooldays of one of the originators of the sport, Sebastien Foucan. The buildup was pretty drawn-out with mock tension over whether or not stuffy old London building managers would let maniac Frenchmen run all over their Grade-One listed heaps.

Then the runs were shown. The more classical ‘monuments’ like The Royal Albert Hall, County Hall and The Mall were actually pretty dull. Not to knock les superheroics francais, but freerunning just doesn’t work on buildings of classical scale it seems – not enough nooks and crannies, ramps, and articulation of form to waltz with it seems.

The trio of parkouristes were at their best in the close quarters, dense backalleys of Bankside and fractal flatroofs of Wardour St, Soho. And at their most spectacular on the gun turrets and gunwales of HMS Belfast and the brutalist concrete crevices of The National Theatre.

A number of pundits were put up to speculate briefly on the potential phenomenon, including Wills Alsop and Hutton, Skateboarding & The City academic Iain Borden and, weirdly, The Pet Shop Boys.

The best bit for me was a little 2 minute sequence in the buildup to the run, where you saw the guys fresh from France, having to familiarise themselves with the feel of a new city.

They had to handle it, touch and examine it. Jack Hawksmoor for real. You saw them adjusting to the slightly different rhythms and gaits of London – brick courses just a little different, past layers of Imperial measure intersposed with more modern metric, bollards at slightly different spacings and heights.

The careful, deliberate and delicate sizing up of a new lover. Fantastic.

Here’s a link to the UK’s own UrbanFreeflow – a good place to start if you want to get into Le Parkour/Freerunning

More screengrabs below in the extended entry…

National Theatre:

National Theatre, Interior:

Above The Mall:

Dali Exhibition, County Hall, South Bank:

Will Alsop:

Will Hutton: