I've been rather ill this weekend. So ill that on Saturday, I vomited no less than eight times in the brief moments that I found myself awake. By the time Sunday came along, I was feeling rather sorry and sore. As ever, I looked to the TV for distraction and comfort. After spending a day letting my mind get addled by Sky Sports News, I decided that I'd settle in with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman on their Long Way Down (BBC Two, Sunday, 9pm). With it being the first in the series, I was certain that it was be filled with enough to entice me for the long haul.
Basically, the show is a road trip with the pair who are off on another adventure, travelling from John o' Groats to South Africa, passing through 18 countries. Boorman and McGregor giggle like school girls at every turn, even when things get a bit testy. After seeing McGregor's resilience on Ray Mears and Ewan McGregor: Extreme Jungle I felt pretty certain that the show would be filled with enough fun and grit to make this writer grin.
Personally, I felt that this show failed to deliver... although I'll be happy to put it down to my illness if next week's show proves to be great. Focusing on the preparation and build-up to the trip, I found myself flicking through the newspapers and some books for the entire duration of the programme. As warm and engaging as the duo are, I couldn't help but get distracted from the TV preferring to skim through a book that I've read before. That's not a great sign for me.
That's not to say that the show wasn't filled with incidents. Training for guerrilla attacks so some genuine tension, with Boorman doing a bunk half way through. Of course, when the (very realistic) training was over, they all have a laugh about it. McGregor broke his leg. Charlie was held in a London airport for saying something about a bomb (silly man) and friction arose when Ewan's wife announced that she wanted in on the trip.
Maybe my girlfriend is a better judge of this show than me. She isn't ill and noted that "if you bothered to stop reading, you'd probably get into this". She's probably right, but I wanted to distract myself from the pulled muscles in my stomach... and this road trip.. or rather, the training for a road trip, simply wasn't doing it. I'll tune in next week for sure, and hopefully, seeing these in more exciting surroundings will get me going.
What I liked about this episode was that it made an issue of the fact that a trip like this takes a hell of a lot of planning. It didn't try and fool us into thinking that Charlie and Ewan just got on their bikes when they felt like it. No there's boring things to sort out like visas and getting the right to film in Sudan. Quite an interesting way to approach the first episode, I thought.
I felt is lacked the roughness and freshness of the first trip, This episode glossed over some more interesting apsects such as bike choice,training and specific equipment for Africa. As everyone had done it previously there didn't seem that raw edge to it. They both knew what to expect and I certainly agree that the dynamics of Ewan's wife going on the trip would really mess it up!
love this show. loved the last one..
LWD is tedious and the two stars, well one star and one failed actor, come across as utterly tedious themselves.
What is the point of making a film where the travellers don't actually stop to see anything? It's the equivalant of watching two pricks circumnavigate them M25 for 6 episodes, but with sand.
Avoid.
Ben