. The genre is capacious enough to admit of almost any arrangement, which is why Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming, who last year pootled around Scotland, are now randomly tacking a trip to Los Angeles onto their new series. Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond (Channel 4) hovers somewhere between a delight and a dog's dinner. This is partly down to personnel, which included an actual dog brought along by Cumming. It's impossible to conceive of anyone not enjoying the company of Cumming, whose wears his stardom ever so modestly. His cheeky self-deprecation and gift for tolerance make him the ideal emollient and straight man for his fellow traveller, whose middle name is Marmite. Since she joined the cast of ageing guinea pigs in The Real Marigold Hotel nearly seven years ago, Margolyes's Indian summer as a potty-mouthed globetrotter has become a never-ending jolly. But incontinent banter about farts and boob droop – her default setting – don't put quite enough fuel in the tank to get us all the way across the Highlands from east coast to west. Thank goodness for a rich, warm cameo from Succession's Brian Cox at Dundee Rep, where all three crammed into an ill-lit dressing room to reminisce about thespian body odour and their salad days in greasepaint. The show's magazine format is a convenient hold-all for any item they fancy bunging in. In this episode, the travel element was ticked off early. First they chugged over the West Highland viaduct now known as Hogwarts Express. Then they boarded a tandem mobility scooter to show how the Cairngorms are accessible to all, so long as Margolyes hasn't wedged her vehicle across the wooded path. The film crew had to step in or we'd all still be there. The journey concluded with a celebration in which Cumming, an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, officiated as his cousin and his partne){kind=link}
Margolyes and Cumming returned to the campervan for another series of Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond
There are plenty of gentle travelogues which pair up celebrities for double the fun (see also Canal Journeys, DNA Journeys). The genre is capacious enough to admit of almost any arrangement, which is why Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming, who last year pootled around Scotland, are now randomly tacking a trip to Los Angeles onto their new series.
Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond (Channel 4) hovers somewhere between a delight and a dog’s dinner. This is partly down to personnel, which included an actual dog brought along by Cumming. It’s impossible to conceive of anyone not enjoying the company of Cumming, whose wears his stardom ever so modestly. His cheeky self-deprecation and gift for tolerance make him the ideal emollient and straight man for his fellow traveller, whose middle name is Marmite.
Since she joined the cast of ageing guinea pigs in The Real Marigold Hotel nearly seven years ago, Margolyes’s Indian summer as a potty-mouthed globetrotter has become a never-ending jolly. But incontinent banter about farts and boob droop – her default setting – don’t put quite enough fuel in the tank to get us all the way across the Highlands from east coast to west. Thank goodness for a rich, warm cameo from Succession’s Brian Cox at Dundee Rep, where all three crammed into an ill-lit dressing room to reminisce about thespian body odour and their salad days in greasepaint.
The show’s magazine format is a convenient hold-all for any item they fancy bunging in. In this episode, the travel element was ticked off early. First they chugged over the West Highland viaduct now known as Hogwarts Express. Then they boarded a tandem mobility scooter to show how the Cairngorms are accessible to all, so long as Margolyes hasn’t wedged her vehicle across the wooded path. The film crew had to step in or we’d all still be there.