Margolyes and Cumming can’t be as lost as the poor viewers taken on this vapid and exhausting tour of Caledonia – complete with a cringeworthy encounter with the locals
As Macbeth so nearly rightly said, a bad travelogue is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Minus the fury, this is a fair summary of Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming’s Caledonian travels – including a trip to Cawdor Castle – in Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland (Channel 4), the first in an unaccountable and possibly unconscionable series of three hour-long episodes to follow them trundling round the blameless land in a campervan, “rediscovering” their roots.
