Narrated by Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall, New York: World’s Richest City is a glossy and aspirational series…
The three-part documentary sheds a highly entertaining light on the colourful array of people, places and events that make up the Big Apple. In three episodes, the series maps the richest, busiest and biggest that the city has to offer.
In Richest, we go from the realtors hustling to sell multi-million-dollar apartments in Manhattan to the immigrant jeweller, now designing bespoke diamond rings for the mega-wealthy. In Busiest we meet the people that make the city tick, from the staff running Grand Central – the busiest railway station in the USA – to the garbage collectors battling rats as they clean up the streets. And in Biggest, we go from Donato, whose job is to maintain the lights in Times Square, some of them 22 stories high, to Daniel, manager of the biggest rooftop bar in Manhattan where 1,200 guests nightly are served with around 8,000 cocktails per shift.
But the star of the show is the city itself, its legendary skyline, vast grid of glitzy avenues and fascinating cross streets and above all, its larger-than-life characters.
In the first episode of this landmark series, we explore the eye-watering wealth on show in the Big Apple and delve into the ways that the city’s 8.5 million population like to spend it.
Realtor Noble Black has sales of more than one billion dollars’ worth of property in New York under his belt. Today his quest is to source a luxury apartment for a hedge fund manager moving to the city with a budget of $50 million (over £36 million) to spend on the right pad. But with this level of cash to splash, the client is naturally fantastically demanding – and with hundreds of thousands in commission at stake – the pressure is on Noble.
High-flying professionals, cash rich and time poor, flock to Saks Fifth Avenue where they can be sure of instant attention. Senior Stylist Lindsay Bernay has been tasked with picking out a capsule wardrobe of seven full outfits for a senior executive, intent on dressing to impress. The problem is that her mega-rich client has only one hour available for shopping. Lindsay must hit the bullseye with every outfit to secure her sales.
Meanwhile, one of New Yorkers’ favourite ways to spend money is on beauty treatments. Leading dermatologist Rita Linkner makes a speciality of home visits and today she’s off to the Hamptons in the wealthy suburbs to offer fillers and lasering to a new client.
Finally, jewellery designer Zameer Kassam is in the running for a fabulous commission, worth half a million dollars, to create a bespoke ring for multi-millionaire Joe, who’s planning to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Zameer used to dream of living in America and moved to New York from East Africa in 1971. He believes that New York is the only city in the world where he could have made it, forging a glittering career from such a poor start in life.
New York: World’s Richest City Narrated by Kim Cattral, Channel 5 tonight at 10 pm
