[ad_1]
REVIEW: TV’s most outrageous and hilarious geographical adventure show is back.
Yes, those two queens in a campervan – “legendary actress, teller of tales and all-round national treasure” Miriam Margolyes and “actor, singer, dancer and writer” Alan Cumming – have returned for a second, four-part tour, this time traversing America, as well as their beloved Caledonia.
Signing up for another jaunt, as Cumming puts it “against all good sense” and “older, but not necessarily wiser”, the pair begin Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond (which debuts on Sky TV’s Living Channel on Saturday, September 9 at 7.30pm) at Lochaber’s Glenfinnan Railway Station.
It’s there that they catch the Jacobite Steam Train, following the same path as Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express to Fort William, where their glitzy new vehicle lies in wait.
While delighted to see Cumming and his canine companion Lala, the even-blunt Margolyes isn’t a fan of his new hairstyle. “I’m doing a show where I’m playing Robert Burns,” he tries to explain.
“You look like [Harry Potter’s Professor Severus] Snape. It’s hideous,” she snaps back.
Supplied
Feel-good viewing that’s also bloody funny, Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond is a series with heart, as well as lots of self-deprecating and arch humour.
As they catch up and reminisce about their last tour, especially, as Cumming ventures, “that bit where I touched your bum and a nation baulked”, armed with a new loo roll holder, they set off into the Cairngorms to test out the area’s famed accessible tracks with their new tandem mobility scooter.
Struggling with her steed’s turning circle, Margolyes drives Cumming to distraction as he attempts to introduce her to geocaching. Unimpressed by the trinkets, she instead goes off on a tangent about how she was forced to leave the Girl Guides “because my breasts were too large”.
After a brief stop at the region’s reindeer centre, the dynamic duo head to the home of “jute, jam and journalism” – Dundee – where they encounter one of Scotland’s most famous living actors – a man who describes Margolyes as “very lewd”.
“I fell in love with your voice,” Succession star Brian Cox coos about a woman who, he says, has been omnipresent in his life. “And then you met me,” she cackles.
While Cox wistfully and poignantly recalls treading the boards at the very theatre they’re in at the tender age of 14 – and sleeping under the stage – Margolyes ensures things never get to melancholy, by detailing the time she pretended to be drunk on stage and end up taking out a punter in the front row, before revealing that she “stole” a pair of socks from the set of one of the Harry Potter movies.
Not wanting to be left out of the thespian tales, Cumming then escorts Margolyes to the village of Luss – home of beloved Scottish soap Take the High Road. As he regales her with stories from this time on the show as ne’er-do-well Jim Hunter, Cumming laments that he never got to give the character – the first to be murdered on the long-running series – a proper send-off. “They got an old corpse from Taggart to double for me, rather than invite me back.”
Supplied
Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming are back on the road again in Lost and Scotland and Beyond.
It’s this kind of intimate insight and the duo’s delightful banter (like when Cumming commentates Margolyes’ struggles to get her bra back on after an open-air massage) that really makes this a must-watch.
However, as well as the often self-deprecating and arch humour, this is also a series with a lot of heart. Watching Cumming officiate at his cousin’s renewal of his wedding vows is uplifting, while future episodes’ adventures include wand whittling on the Isle of Skye, drag bingo in Palm Springs and – naturally – a Las Vegas cabaret show.
Feel-good viewing that’s also bloody funny – what more could you want?
Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Beyond debuts at 7.30pm on Saturday, September 9 on Sky TV’s Living Channel.
[ad_2]