‘Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India’ lives up to their Bafta-winning Grand Tour of Italy
I can’t abide celebrity travelogues. Here I am, sat in my cold living room with the rain cascading down my window, while Bradley Walsh, Amanda Holden, Jack Whitehall, or Jack Whitehall’s dad frolic around in the sunshine. It’s the must-have string to the bow of any middling TV celebrity – and the ultimate kick in the teeth for the majority of us who aren’t paid to enjoy the trip of a lifetime. Jammy gits.
But there is one exception to my rule. No, not the dulcet tones of Clive Myrie nor the experienced knowledge of Michael Palin, but the wonderful, beautiful, emotional trips that TV judge Rob Rinder and X Factor joke act turned beloved presenter Rylan Clark invite us along on. Yes, really.
The pair are currently lighting up Sunday evenings on BBC Two with their four-part trip around India, Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India. It follows on from their Grand Tour of Italy, which was broadcast on the same channel last year and deservedly won a Bafta (even beating travel juggernaut Race Across the World).
This time, they are following in the footsteps of E.M. Forster, whose 1924 novel (from which the series takes its name) was inspired by his travels through the country in the early 20th century. Of course, India – particularly its big cities like New Delhi – is very different these days from the place Forster fell in love with, but its essence of bustling vibrancy permeates through the screen largely thanks to Rinder and Rylan’s enthusiasm.
There are the usual attempts at forced fun – a puppet show, a trip to see a fortune teller. In any other celebrities’ hands, these would be throwaway tourist traps, but Rinder and Rylan make these moments teem with emotion.
At the puppet show, orchestrated by a group of artists forced out of their homes by property developers, Rinder sheds genuine tears at seeing art bring such joy to people who have little. The psychic’s reading of Rylan is one of the funniest scenes of television I’ve seen all year – the disbelief on the host’s face as he is told he has “psychiatric problems” and in a past life he had “many relations” is priceless – cue more tears from Rinder, this time from laughter.
The pair are unlikely friends and perhaps even unlikelier travel companions. Rylan is a fake-tanned, make-up wearing Essex lad with a penchant for the finer things in life; Rinder a highly intelligent, RP-speaking former lawyer who loves classical music and art. While you would expect to find Rinder strolling through the wings of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, it would be no surprise to see Rylan sunning himself on the beaches of Marbella. Of course, these are stereotypes that both are happy to play up to, but even happier to defy.
As much as the series is about India and its people’s attitudes to life, these three episodes also reveal so much about the men themselves. We learn that Rylan would love to have kids one day, that Rinder – who divorced his husband in 2018 – is ready to find love again. Rather than celebrity tittle tattle, it’s an insight into the lives of two gay men without sexualisation or sensationalism – something that is still all too rare on primetime TV.
It’s the sort of personalisation that the apparent greats of the genre – your Palins, your Portillos – don’t offer. They’re of a generation where travel programming is one of the most serious (and therefore dullest) services in broadcasting. And while Rinder and Rylan cover the usual bases of history, geography and – as is their raison d’etre – art, they also invoke the most important element of travelling the world. It’s not just about where you are and things you see, but the people you’re with, the people you meet, how they make you feel.
Rinder and Rylan have humanity in spades – I will certainly be tagging along for their next trip, an odyssey through Greece.
‘Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India’ is on BBC Two tonight at 9pm. The full series is streaming on BBC iPlayer
