Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
For some older viewers there will never be another broadcaster or journalist to replace the calm authorative voice of Alan Whicker as the beacon of bringing scenes and a wide range of interesting people from other countries into the home. Perhaps there never will be his like again, like Jan Morris or Bill Bryson in literature, the essence of the reporting is quintessential to the understanding. They are also arguably for some the reason why they found their own adventures and did incredible things; the world after all is too small to be ignored and Dara O’ Briain and Ed Byrne are too good to be dismissed.
Many have tried to capture the cool exposure, some have done a very good job but as they traverse around the various sights and explain directly to camera what they have seen, there perhaps is an element of nagging distrust, somehow they just don’t seem to feeling the enjoyment of what they are privileged to do, the gravitas of certain aspects which bring the plight or the discomfort to those they have met as they talk about the world to the people back home in the U.K. and in Ireland.
The Three Men and a Boat series did much to bring Dara O’ Briain into the minds of television viewers and made that series all the more brighter by being part of a travelling threesome that enthused vocally about what they saw on Britain’s and Ireland’s waterways. By pairing off with his fellow Irish comedian Ed Byrne in a truly epic adventure, the two were able to show that there is some mileage left in this type of documentary programme.
Following in the long since gone tyre tracks of Sullivan Richardson, Arnold Whitaker and Kenneth van Hee, three men of vision, three damn fools, or indeed complete insanity, depending on your point of view of such things, the two comedians followed part of the route that was inspired to be built as a result of the pre-war notion of connecting all the countries in one long continuous road, The Pan American Highway.
No matter the journey, if it inspires you or wistfully makes you regret that travel is out of your reach, to tackle such a feat, and even today it is a accomplishment of endurance to travel in one car for thousands of miles through a multitude of countries and only have the barest inkling of what is to come, the journey is all. To even watch it being performed is to install a modicum of pride that the human spirit has not been completely vanquished under a hail storm and tidal wave of mass consumerism and total apathy.
Television is at its true best when it adheres to Lord John Reith’s maxim of “Educate, Entertain and Inform” and steers well away from the towering ridicule that very cheap comedy provides; thankfully both Dara and Ed have not really fallen foul of the latter and they have certainly added greatly to the former in Dara and Ed’s Great Big Adventure.
From meeting the indigenous people that live in near perfect solitude in the Rainforests of the Darien Gap, to the astonishing revelation of the quality of life enjoyed by the people of Costa Rica and the sheer size of the Panama Canal and the true endeavour of humanity it took to realise Sullivan Richardson’s dream of a road connecting all the countries of the America’s and that of the ocean equivalent that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific in the Panama Canal; this was a travelogue worth watching, worth being educated by and, whilst not being as informative as anything Alan Whicker produced on an off-day, was still enlightening, so much so that if energy ever permitted, who wouldn’t want to travel the entire length of road inspired by Richardson’s, Whitaker’s and van Hee, who wouldn’t want to kiss the asphalt and kiss life in such a way.
Dara and Ed’s Great Big Adventure is to be explored fully; it is after all, television that allows the imagination to run free.
Ian D. Hall