The celebrities are everywhere: go to the ends of the earth and there you will find famous faces wryly immersing themselves in the local culture in the name of yet another TV travelogue (and enjoying a free – no wait, paid – holiday in the process). Stanley Tucci is in Italy, as are Alan Carr and Amanda Holden. Jane McDonald is cruising around the globe. Bradley Walsh, Romesh Ranganathan and Jack Whitehall have made their trips a family affair. Martin Clunes, Conan O’Brien, Fern Britton, Gordon Ramsay, Paul Merton, Zac Efron – I could go on – are all at it, too.
Granted, few are undertaking quite as humdrum a journey as that of Alison Steadman and Larry Lamb in Alison & Larry: Billericay to Barry. The pair are driving from Essex to south Wales, the twin settings of the beloved 00s sitcom Gavin and Stacey, in which they co-starred (not as the culture-clash couple in question, of course, but as Gav’s parents). That is no slight on Britain’s lovely scenery, or the ever-so-friendly people they meet during their increasingly random sightseeing stopoffs: a bird of prey centre, Marlow lock, a puppet-making workshop. Rather, the mundanity of this essentially uneventful trip is magnified by the fact that it has been stretched, wafer-thin, into three hour-long episodes. Worse, squatting at the show’s core is a sad reality: Steadman and Lamb have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
