“As most of us are unlikely to be invited on holiday with Joanna Lumley any time soon, let us enjoy the next best thing,” said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph: an ITV series in which she travels through Indonesia, Madagascar, India, Jordan and Zanzibar, tracing the history of the spice trade.
“Celebrity travelogues are the scourge of television, but I will always make an exception for Lumley”, whose enthusiasm and manners never flag. “Look at this, a dear little cabin with my own kettle,” she beams aboard an unlovely ferry from an Indonesian port.
The bathroom, she adds, has “one of those nice buckets where you wash your bottom with a pipe”. Most stars would recoil in horror, but Lumley sighs contentedly: “Couldn’t be better.” She has “reasons to be cheerful”, of course – she’s on an all-expenses-paid trip – but her approach to her televised travels feels refreshingly “uncynical”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Lumley floats around looking lovely in linen, smiles charmingly and says “golly” a lot, said Ben Dowell in The Times. All this makes for very “soothing television”, but you do find yourself wondering if there could be a bit more insight.
Lumley is nothing if not game, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian, and the producers are clearly aware that there is something a bit tricky about a “posh, white lady born in India under the Raj” presenting a tour of Britain’s former colonies: the historical controversies are alluded to. But the overall effect is still uneasy. Perhaps this kind of travelogue has just had its day.
Where to watch: ITVX
-
Obesity drugs: Will Trump’s plan lower costs?Feature Even $149 a month, the advertised price for a starting dose of a still-in-development GLP-1 pill on TrumpRx, will be too big a burden for the many Americans ‘struggling to afford groceries’
-
The ‘Kavanaugh stop’Feature Activists say a Supreme Court ruling has given federal agents a green light to racially profile Latinos
-
Has 21st-century culture become too bland?Under The Radar New book argues that the algorithm has killed creative originality
-
Film reviews: ‘Jay Kelly’ and ‘Sentimental Value’Feature A movie star looks back on his flawed life and another difficult dad seeks to make amends
-
6 homes on the Gulf CoastFeature Featuring an elegant townhouse in New Orleans’ French Quarter and contemporary coastal retreat in Texas
-
The vast horizons of the Puna de AtacamaThe Week Recommends The ‘dramatic and surreal’ landscape features volcanoes, fumaroles and salt flats
-
The John Lewis ad: touching, or just weird?Talking Point This year’s festive offering is full of 1990s nostalgia – but are hedonistic raves really the spirit of Christmas?
-
Train Dreams pulses with ‘awards season gravitas’The Week Recommends Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton star in this meditative period piece about a working man in a vanished America
-
Middleland: Rory Stewart’s essay collection is a ‘triumph’The Week Recommends The Rest is Politics co-host compiles his fortnightly columns written during his time as an MP
-
‘Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America’ and ‘Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary’feature The culture divide in small-town Ohio and how the internet usurped dictionaries
-
6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
