Martin Clunes Islands of the Pacific
Wilderness with Simon Reeve
Inis na nIontas
Since my overseas travelling days are over until we get carbon neutral air travel, get my jollies these days from watching travel shows. Here are three I have just completed viewing.
Even though I have lived in Vancouver for over 30 years, I remain an island person at heart, so I enjoyed English actor Martin Clunes’ previous series Islands of America (actually a misnomer since it sticks to the US) and Islands of Australia, and had enjoyed the first three episodes of his latest travel series, Islands of the Pacific, before filming ground to a halt due to Covid. Now he is back with two more episodes where he visits parts of Papua New Guinea and the Philippines you have probably never heard of. The scenery is great, the locations interesting, and Clunes does a good job as the affable charming visitor, albeit not quite as good as Michael Palin used to do in a similar role in his travel series. But even though he isn’t Palin, I can still recommend this interesting series.
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Another longtime English travel series host, Simon Reeve, tales quite a different approach. Although you do get to see amazing sights and meet all sorts of interesting people, Reeve also likes to expose the dirty underbelly of the places he visits, giving a more rounded view. With his latest series, Wilderness with Simon Reeve, he really does make the effort to get off the neaten track, whether it be hiking for days into the deepest jungles of the Congo, skirting the Patagonian Icefield, sailing for days to explore the Coral Triangle of islands between PNG and the Philippines, and hanging out with the San (formerly Bushmen) deep in the Kalahari Desert. Highly recommended.
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In retrospect, it probably wasn’t fair to watch Inis na nIontas immediately after the other two and their exotic locations, given its three episodes of this series are restricted to exploring the islands off the northern and western shores of Ireland. Meeting the local ginmaker is not quite as fascinating as hanging out with the more ‘exotic’ people and cultures we met in Clunes’ and Reeves’ series, but these islands, small though they are, are packed with beauty and history, and certainly worth the visit. As a bonus for me, host Ardal O’Hanlon spends the beginning of the third episode in Glengadiff, the small town with a surprisingly tropical climate thanks to the Gulf Stream which I used as my base when I rode a bike around the Beara Peninsula more than 30 years ago. I would say this one is more suited to those particularly interested in Ireland, but even if you aren’t now, you might get interested in visiting after watching it.
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