While David Baddiel has never appealed greatly to me, we as so often have a case here of somewhat fraught circumstances acting as a kind of great leveller and rendering the guy more palatable. Travelling companion Hugh Dennis also seems to have a steadying impact, as Baddiel notes himself, as does narrator Adrian Dunbar. Quite why a narrator is needed here is a bit obscure, but Dunbar's familiar dulcit tones do their stuff here nicely.
While the longish road taken indeed has its moments of danger, we see evidence of risks faced and accidents happening, but our intrepid duo don't ultimately face up to anything much worse than a screwed-up starting mechanism hot-wired by locals and Baddiel's not-too-severe-looking bouts of diarrhoea - and that would represent an interesting finding in and of itself.
The pair have moderately witty things to say, and I laughed out loud quite a few times, but - as noted above - the circumstances of this amazing country seem to work some magic with the drivers, toning them down a little bit - and all to the good.
This programme has its charms primarily because of the little effort it makes to "sell" Ethiopia as a travel destination. It's all low-key in approach, and all the more effective for that. Our heroes sort of stumble upon magnificent vistas and built heritage, and their ad hoc-ish meetings and interviews with people on the way work well and offer more than one interesting insight, all the time as if "by the way".
I liked it, and regarded it as a reasonably eye-opening and entertaining one hour spent.
While the longish road taken indeed has its moments of danger, we see evidence of risks faced and accidents happening, but our intrepid duo don't ultimately face up to anything much worse than a screwed-up starting mechanism hot-wired by locals and Baddiel's not-too-severe-looking bouts of diarrhoea - and that would represent an interesting finding in and of itself.
The pair have moderately witty things to say, and I laughed out loud quite a few times, but - as noted above - the circumstances of this amazing country seem to work some magic with the drivers, toning them down a little bit - and all to the good.
This programme has its charms primarily because of the little effort it makes to "sell" Ethiopia as a travel destination. It's all low-key in approach, and all the more effective for that. Our heroes sort of stumble upon magnificent vistas and built heritage, and their ad hoc-ish meetings and interviews with people on the way work well and offer more than one interesting insight, all the time as if "by the way".
I liked it, and regarded it as a reasonably eye-opening and entertaining one hour spent.
