Episode 1

To mark Hollywood's 100th anniversary, Paul Merton travels to America in a series that explores how the early pioneers there laid down the blueprint for today's cinema industry.

In the first episode, Hollywood is still a sleepy California backwater of orange groves about to be transformed by film-makers from the East Coast in search of sunny locations and wide open spaces. The film concentrates on the career of DW Griffith, one of Hollywood's most influential and controversial directors during this explosive early period. Within the space of a few short years in the 1910s, he went from making short 'cliffhangers' to three-hour epics as Hollywood cinema became the world's dominant entertainment medium.

At its heart were the beginnings of the star system, which created screen idols like Mary Pickford, who starred in many of Griffith's films. Passionate, playful but above all knowledgeable, Paul Merton retrieves cinema's founding DNA to provide a fitting and unique tribute to Hollywood's movie-making history.