Great Canal Journeys, episode 1 review: a lovely tranquil trip that was tinged with sadness
One of TV’s most charming series sailed back onto our screens last night, but it was bittersweet because this could well be the final voyage. Great Canal Journeys (Channel 4) saw actors Timothy West (skipper) and Prunella Scales (first mate-cum-cook) taking a tranquil trip down memory lane.
The couple returned to the Oxford Canal, where they first fell in love with Britain and Ireland’s inland waterways. Aboard their own boat, the traditionally designed “Peggy Thompson”, they navigated north from Banbury, chugging through the bucolic Cherwell Valley to the village of Cropredy. They paused to ponder the bloody battle here during the English Civil War and the annual festival founded by Fairport Convention – at which point the genial folk-rockers came aboard to play Who Knows Where the Time Goes?. “It almost could’ve been written for us,” said Scales with a fond smile.
Their trip was tinged with sadness, given the recent deterioration in Scales’s dementia and deafness. “It makes conversation difficult, so we don’t talk as much as we did and that’s sad,” sighed the stoical West. “I do feel quite lonely sometimes.”
Wrapped up cosily in hats and Barbours, sipping mugs of steaming tea, they instead watched the countryside glide by at four miles per hour. Scales said hello to every duck, swan or lamb they passed, while describing the buds and blossom as “magical”. Their affection and enthusiasm was certainly intact. “As her condition gradually progresses, Pru’s at her most content simply enjoying nature,” West explained tenderly. “Out here, she’s at her best. On the canal, her distant memories float to the surface.”
There were digressions into history and engineering, readings aloud from literature. They stopped at the medieval church of Wormleighton, the Spencer family seat, then onto their home port of Braunston, where they were joined by their family for a party celebrating four decades of “messing about in boats” and their 35th episode.
En route, there was reminiscence, reflection and peaceful interludes of silence. This was an even gentler treat than BBC Two’s Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, if you can imagine something so soothing. Flashbacks to previous favourite journeys added to the elegiac feel.
“The canals will carry on without us,” concluded West. “I just wonder if we can carry on without them.” If this is to be the pair’s last series, they have done themselves proud – but I hope we meet again.
