A well-trodden path
ISUPPOSE it all started in 1989 with Michael Palin’s valiant and goodhumoured attempt to follow the route of Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg and go “Around The World In 80 Days”. Since then, the format of a celebrity fronting a travel series has been copied many times, both on network and local TV.
Many of the ‘celebrities’ fronting travel series on the major networks are completely unknown to me and seem to have very little of interest to say.
Mind you, that also applies to some series featuring famous names, as was proven recently in a series featuring a TV star and his wife driving around the UK in a motorhome.
Their conversations and the situations they found themselves in (“Do you think we can make it down this narrow country road, darling?” “Ooh, I’m not sure!”) over six times 60-minute episodes were so mundane I thought the series was sponsored by a tranquiliser manufacturer.
A series in which another TV star travelled (seemingly just to patronise the locals) up the famous river that traverses Vietnam and Cambodia, was, in the celeb’s view, all about putting the ‘Me’ into Me-kong.
“Here in Wales”, to quote someone we won’t mention on this page, our local TV stations send out weathermen, newsreaders, reporters, exrugby players etc, with a camera crew to explore our countryside – while struggling to maintain an interesting narration as they go - with monotonous regularity.
The format is just so tired and predictable now.
I’ve lost count of the occasions I’ve switched on BBC Wales or ITV One Wales to see a presenter in a red anorak, with the hood up to keep off the rain, rambling around the Welsh hills, mountains and coastlines, pointing at the same canals, beaches, rivers, islands, lakes, waterfalls and duck ponds we’ve seen in previous series fronted by different ‘local TV personalities’.
The Offa’s Dyke path has been filmed for TV so many times, Offa should have an Equity card by now and after watching a recent show featuring someone else I didn’t recognise confidently striding along the Dyke for 30 minutes, when I looked down…I had mud on my boots.