A good question to ask strangers at parties is: “What TV programme would you most like to appear on?” There are the obvious answers: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is many people’s kneejerk go-to, and a lot of them want to be on Countdown, too. You will be surprised how many adults with full-time jobs are demonically addicted to watching The Chase and so want to be on The Chase, to meet Bradley Walsh if nothing else. I met someone once whose parents had been on both Antiques Roadshow and Time Team, which I think for many people is the fulfilment of their wildest, most fantastic dreams. And, of course, everyone thinks they’d be really good at Taskmaster. But I would like to throw a new contender into the mix, an outsider without much fanfare who is nevertheless making a convincing run at the title – Jane McDonald: Lost in Japan (Friday, 9pm, Channel 5).
How would I explain Jane McDonald: Lost in Japan? I would say it’s like this: Jane McDonald goes to Japan. We have been needing someone to fill the enormous void left by Anthony Bourdain for years, and Jane McDonald is not the one to do it, but the particular texture of travelogue she is bringing here is a joy to watch. Jane McDonald checks into a Shibuya hotel, points to a sign on the 34th floor, and goes: “Oop, that’s my bra size.” She introduces us to the concept of futuristic robotic toilets with the sentence: “Now, I don’t like to get caught short while I’m travelling, so I’m going to spend a penny – or a yen.” There’s a bizarrely long scene where she buys a travelcard for the subway, turns to the camera, and says: “See, that was really, really easy. Even for me. HA!” then wanders off. She takes a GoPro into a public toilet and describes the facilities as “a bit fab”. She sits quietly on the subway, arms folded neatly on her lap, and murmurs: “I don’t want to do my country down, but someone really should come and have a look at how this is run.” It is astonishing, liquid television, and I can only imagine the camera operators on this show had the time of their life following Jane McDonald around, watching her bow too much and stare in marvel at a really busy pedestrian crossing, looking at the clean pavements in wonder. Obviously, she also sings karaoke whenever humanly possible.
But what I like most about watching Jane McDonald natter around Japan is her earnest, open-hearted, curious-without-judging approach to everything she’s confronted with. It would be easy to make a show by overexplaining what is different between here and there – “Look at that! Dried fish! And you should see what the waitresses wear!” – but McDonald never once resorts to that: she’s just genuinely thrilled to be there, seeing and experiencing new things. Occasionally, the tone slips into this oddly practical explainer, as if you’ve just got out of a coma and you’re being walked through your first holiday since the metal bar went through your head – “Wherever you are in the world, I’ve learned, if you can buy your attraction ticket before arrival, do: it saves a lot of bother” – which is then followed up by, say, footage of Jane McDonald on a Shibuya rooftop, struggling to get her phone to take a photo of the sunset. “Just my luck it won’t have taken,” she says, tongue out, eyes squinting. “Oh, look, no, it has.”
For a while there, I was soured on travel TV. Travel Man really does everything we need, and in the post-lockdown travel bans there were, simply, too many shows where oddly matched duos went around the UK in a slightly fun vehicle. But this has brought me right back round again. Perhaps the secret sauce here is that McDonald is flying fully solo – she really is just saying-what-she’s-seeing to the camera a lot of the time because she has no one else to bounce off, whether it’s ordering ramen from a vending machine (a lovely touch: you can see that she’s keeping her money in the envelope they gave her at the bureau de change), or slamming heartily into a sumo wrestler in the middle of a novelty restaurant, or quietly getting emotional over a fortune handed to her at a temple. Or: she’s not doing karaoke again, is she? How many times can one person belt out I Will Survive in one day? Well, whatever – film it. She looks like she’s having fun.
