Rob and Romesh’s DNA Journey was all DNA . . . and no journey
The conventions of telly demand that every comedian picked at random to present a lightweight documentary must declare a deep and abiding passion for the subject.
‘We’ve always longed to know more about elephant conservation in Kenya,’ say a husband-and-wife double act, loading their suitcase with suncream. ‘As a child, I always dreamed of exploring Patagonia,’ claims an out-of-work panto star, hoping for the first-class cabin on British Airways.
At least stand-up comic Rob Beckett was honest, at the disappointing end of his DNA Journey (ITV). ‘I was trying to get a holiday out of it,’ he sighed.
Rob and his mate Romesh Ranganathan were out of luck. The producers meant to send the pair to Sri Lanka, but lockdown and then dangerous civil unrest on the island put paid to that.
Instead, they had a day trip to a hindu temple in London, where a smiling priest hung garlands round their necks and a local historian showed them pictures of Romesh’s ancestral home.
If it was a let-down for us, think how deflated Rob and Romesh must have felt. They had all the DNA, none of the Journey.
This show is conceived as a jauntier version of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? As well as meeting archivists and visiting the haunts of their forebears, the celebs in search of their family past are confronted by distant relatives they didn’t know they had — tracked down through genetic databases.
Rob discovered a ‘cousin’ (several times removed) who won Britain’s Strongest Man in 2006 and went on to become a mixed martial arts fighter. Romesh learned his mother, who came to Britain in the mid1970s, could trace back her maternal line in Sri Lanka for 25,000 years — that’s well over 1,000 generations.
‘I mean, no wonder she’s annoyed that I can’t speak Tamil,’ he mused.
They met a cousin born in Switzerland who spoke not only Tamil but German, too: ‘I feel like I’ve just been replaced by the new iPhone,’ Romesh complained, as his mum fussed over the man.
With foreign travel out of the question, most of the episode was taken up with visits to Beckett family landmarks such as Portsmouth docks, where they learned about an ancestor in the Navy.
Romesh looked increasingly miffed. he has the air of a man bored of puerile quips, who would happily do a grown-up job, if he could find one that paid half as well.
The disruption to international travel meant five new contestants, as Taskmaster (C4) returned, had the run of an empty terminal at Gatwick to play silly games.
Puerile doesn’t begin to describe the challenge set by presenters Greg Davies and Alex horne, who had the comedians throwing loo rolls into a toilet from a high balcony. In another task, they tried to paint a picture by steering Alex around a plastic groundsheet while he dribbled paint from a hose.
Taskmaster was an innovative delight when it first aired in 2015 but, now in its 14th series, it has become jaded and formulaic.
Dara O Briain shrugged in agreement when Greg introduced him as ‘not the first comedian to do this show because their children enjoy it’.
The best game involved guessing film titles from an assortment of props. Given a horned toy sheep and a child’s bow, Sarah Millican suggested The Silence Of The Rams (it was Rambo).
have a go at naming the film Alex was thinking of, dressed as a carrot while holding a teabag and a plastic baby goat.
Carrot . . . tea . . . baby goat . . . it’s The Karate Kid.