So, last night was the third installment of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s special Long Way Down, and I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. I had been looking forward to this all week. I made sure to pee before hand, and I’ll even admit to getting a cup of tea and a stack of Hob Nobs all set up on the coffee table before it started. The previews for this episode showed a lot of Ewan McGregor’s bike falling over, so I thought that we’d see a lot of muddy, sandy, rainy, sweating bike action…but there wasn’t really any of that.
While I’m not suggesting that I’m going to give up on Long Way Down (as I’ve already purchased the soundtrack, official T-shirt and book), this past episode wasn’t exactly gripping. It’s hard for me to criticize the show as on the whole. It’s not a bad TV special. Morally, it feels wrong to be like, “Ugh, in this episode all they did was meet starving children in Ethiopia. Where’s the DANGER!?” However, I think the your average viewer would be rather bored at this point, and want to quit watching.
Do I suggest you stop watching? No! I think you should stick with it! The best is yet to come! Some of the best stuff hasn’t even happened yet! I mean, next time we’ll get to see some crashes! And um…crashes! And maybe even Ewan’s ass again. (Sadly, this past episode only featured a quick flash of Charley Boorman’s ass which, to be honest, pales in comparison to Ewan’s.)
This past episode really just showed the boys cruising from Egypt, to Sudan and on into the greenery of Ethiopia. I think perhaps the main reason this episode was a bit lacking was because it reflected the constant, “Hurry up! We can’t see this city or meet any people! We need to make the next ferry!” pressure Charley and Ewan are under. We don’t get to see them trolling through Cairo spending vast amounts of time in the Pyramids because, well, they didn’t get loads of time to explore the countries that they were traveling through – they just had to plow through them as fast as the conditions would allow.
Over all, I think you should stick with Long Way Down. The past two episodes were brilliant, and just having one slow one in the middle of the series shouldn’t put anybody off. Even Heroes has a boring episode every once and a while.
You can catch up on the past three episodes on The BBC’s YouTube page, and read up on what you’ve missed on the official Long Way Down website.
[image via Getty]
Cate Sevilla is the Deputy Editor of TV Scoop and the Editor of Dollymix. She doesn’t really have the official Long Way Down T-shirt, but if you’d like to buy it for her, she won’t fight you.
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Long Way Down? Possibly the most boring and least entertaining/informative programme that I have ever seen.
No wonder the BBC is in dire financial straits if they are spending licence payers’ money on such cretinous trivia.
The show is a bit of a disappointment when compared to their last series (Long Way Round) as it seems a lot more “look at me the big star” rather than the story of a few blokes on a journey of discovery of somewhere they don’t know. If you like that kind of thing I’d recommend reading Jupiters Travels by Ted Simon. He did it all on his own with no fixers, armed guards or back-up crew.
It wasn’t so much that there wasn’t a lot of danger in the long way down but they spent so much of their time “pushing on” in order to meet deadlines it was unbelievable! Having watched the long way round this was a HUGE disappointment. Far too much time was spent with the support crews and Eve.. Well she spoiled it a bit didn’t she? Charlie was left by himself because Eve wanted a piece of the action which in a way is greedy. Fair enough I can understand that she may have been jealous of Ewan after seeing the journey and experiences he had in the long way round but her arrival completely changed the whole point of the programme Charlie and Ewan riding their bikes to Cape town ALONE. Also was it 4 hundred miles they had to push on because she had to catch a plane back? yeah thats a nice story to be able to tell able to tell the grandchildren. “We rode our bikes all the way down to Cape town once! oh we didn’t stop much to take in the local culture we just tried to get there as fast as we could!” Also as Neil M said the celebrity status was abused so much!
In conclusion, The Long Way Down was a poor follow up to the Long Way Round. If the trip had been longer and more planned out so they didn’t spend so much time “pushing on” then I think it could’ve been up there with the Long Way Round.