There are many light travelogues which pair up celebrities for double the enjoyable (see additionally Canal Journeys, DNA Journeys). The style is capacious sufficient to confess of virtually any association, which is why Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming, who final yr pootled round Scotland, at the moment are randomly tacking a visit to Los Angeles onto their new sequence.
Miriam and Alan: Misplaced in Scotland and Past (Channel 4) hovers someplace between a delight and a canine’s dinner. That is partly right down to personnel, which included an precise canine introduced alongside by Cumming. It’s unimaginable to conceive of anybody not having fun with the corporate of Cumming, whose wears his stardom ever so modestly. His cheeky self-deprecation and present for tolerance make him the best emollient and straight man for his fellow traveller, whose center identify is Marmite.
Since she joined the forged of ageing guinea pigs in The Actual Marigold Lodge practically seven years in the past, Margolyes’s Indian summer time as a potty-mouthed globetrotter has turn into a endless jolly. However incontinent banter about farts and boob droop – her default setting – don’t put fairly sufficient gasoline within the tank to get us all the best way throughout the Highlands from east coast to west. Thank goodness for a wealthy, heat cameo from Succession’s Brian Cox at Dundee Rep, the place all three crammed into an ill-lit dressing room to reminisce about thespian physique odour and their salad days in greasepaint.
The present’s journal format is a handy hold-all for any merchandise they fancy bunging in. On this episode, the journey component was ticked off early. First they chugged over the West Highland viaduct now referred to as Hogwarts Specific. Then they boarded a tandem mobility scooter to indicate how the Cairngorms are accessible to all, as long as Margolyes hasn’t wedged her automobile throughout the wooded path. The movie crew needed to step in or we’d all nonetheless be there.
The journey concluded with a celebration wherein Cumming, an ordained minister of the Common Life Church, officiated as his cousin and his companion renewed their marriage ceremony vows. This was probably a significant occasion for the kilted chaps in query, however was upstaged by Margolyes’s rendition of The Owl and the Pussycat, which felt inappropriate on any variety of ranges and one particularly. However let’s not go into that.