Frankie Boyle's Tour Of Scotland
- TV factual / stand-up
- BBC Two
- 2020
- 4 episodes (1 series)
Frankie Boyle discovers the true Scotland as he tours his latest stand-up show.
Episode menu
Series 1, Episode 1 - Aberdeen To Oban
Further details
Frankie Boyle travels from Aberdeen to Oban to explore how Scotland's landscape has shaped the nation's history and meets people who live off the land today. It is a journey that sees him contemplate where best to go whilst in witness protection, discuss why people shouldn't trust extroverts and question whether horses laugh.
On his journey, Frankie meets a hermit called Jake who lives in the forests of the north east of Scotland. Frankie finds out why Jake has retreated to the countryside before exploring his very unique treehouse.
On the north east coast of Scotland, Frankie visits the community of Findhorn. He finds out how this remote area of barren sand dunes became transformed into a thriving village whose main aim is to be environmentally, economically and socially self-sustaining. Frankie helps out in the greenhouse and explores the humble beginnings of the commune and questions whether he is suited to life in a remote community.
Frankie travels to one of the most stunning glens in the Highlands and gives his own unique perspective on one of the darkest events in Scotland's history - the Glencoe massacre. Visiting the beautiful town of Inveraray, he meets Andy Wightman, an MSP and a campaigner for land reform, who explains why more than half of Scotland is owned by fewer than 500 people.
Frankie then goes deep underground to visit the Cruachan Power Station. Frankie travels along a kilometre-long tunnel to see the huge turbine hall that has been carved out of solid granite in the heart of a mountain and meet one of the 'Tunnel Tigers' who worked on the construction of this engineering marvel. Frankie then goes into full celebrity travelogue-mode as he embarks on a ferry journey to the Isle of Mull. The journey culminates in a stand-up show in Oban.
Broadcast details
- Date
- Friday 7th February 2020
- Time
- 10pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 30 minutes
Cast & crew
Frankie Boyle | Host / Presenter |
Andy Wightman | Self |
Jake Williams | Self |
Frankie Boyle | Writer |
Steven Dick | Writer (Additional Material) |
Charlie Skelton | Writer (Additional Material) |
Meryl O'Rourke | Writer (Additional Material) |
Aiden Spackman | Writer (Additional Material) |
Graeme Hart | Series Director |
Graeme Hart | Series Producer |
Mick McAvoy | Executive Producer |
Nicky Waltham | Executive Producer |
Hamish Fergusson | Executive Producer |
Jane Tubb | Editor |
Duane McClune | Director of Photography |
Giles Lamb | Composer |
Video
Scotland is beautiful BECAUSE it rains
Frankie Boyle arrives in Oban and travels across on to Mull discussing his favourite ferry journey.
Featuring: Frankie Boyle.
Press
If you thought Frankie Boyle's four-part jaunt around Scotland was just another comic dropping off the mousewheel for a freebie, think again; apart from anything else, Mr Boyle is there well before you and does all those gags but better. And it is a severely different beast to so many travelogues, in that it includes genuine understated humour, mainly through the voiceovered asides: your ears blink in a disbelieving, did-he-just-say-that? manner. Within five minutes he meets a hermit "who's chosen to live alone amid the shallow graves of the dense forests of Rhynie in Aberdeenshire", and delighted hermit Jake by describing his caravan-in-a-treehouse as both "a kind of low-level Scottish Dignitas" and "this is where I'd like to come if I was in witness protection", while gently mocking the vogue for "living in the moment". "What, like a heroin addict, or a dog?"
Boyle quite likes the long-established eco-community of Findhorn, "which has its own currency and, sadly, its own theatre", and notes, driving down Glencoe - "like me it has a rugged and a dramatic beauty, and we've both caused several ramblers to go missing" - that Jimmy Savile once had a home here. I can never quite look that savage glen straight in the eyes again. "Here he would entertain such luminaries as his friend Margaret Thatcher and the demon Adrammelech, ancient Assyrian commander of hell."
A few decades earlier it fell to another comedian, Billy Connolly, to pithily rip off the carapaces of many aspects of his own country, exposing coy kailyard sentimentality and sectarianism for the ludicrosities they were. Boyle is doing an equally smack-up job of explaining the confusions of a small-sprawled nation to ourselves, in the fraught and twitchy 2020s, while knitting in just enough aspects of history and politics, such as Robert the Bruce's drive for independence - "700 years before Nicola Sturgeon took up his mantle. And his haircut" - to keep it all urgently relevant. I'd urge anyone watching south of the border to revel in it. You might learn something; if little else, then to relish the high concept of tinder-dry, mournful glee.
Euan Ferguson, The Observer, 9th February 2020TV review: Frankie Boyle's Tour Of Scotland
Frankie Boyle's Tour Of Scotland is a four-part programme of delicate genius and stirring depth.
Camilla Long, The Sunday Times, 9th February 2020"There comes a time in every comedian's life where he ends up doing travelogues," says Frankie Boyle, and so we join the comic on a bucolic tour of his home country as he prepares new material in small clubs for an upcoming UK run. Boyle is typically caustic, spending time with a hermit, Jake, in Aberdeenshire and contemplating spots to hide out in case he's placed in witness protection, as well as monologuing on a picturesque ferry ride to the Isle of Mull.
Ammar Kalia, The Guardian, 7th February 2020Frankie Boyle's Tour of Scotland, episode one review
Four-star review of the comedian's travelogue.
Alison Rowat, The Herald, 7th February 2020Frankie Boyle's Tour of Scotland review
There comes a time in every comedian's career, says Boyle, when its time to sign up for a televised jolly. If only they were all as hilarious as this spiky, Billy Connolly-style adventure.
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian, 7th February 2020Frankie Boyle's Tour of Scotland, BBC2, review
Acerbic comic proves the perfect guide for an off-kilter road trip.
Jeff Robson, i Newspaper, 7th February 2020