Peach Boy • 2019 • episode "S1E5" • James May: Our Man in Japan

48:10

In this our penultimate episode, we reach the remote and beautiful Maramures, a region that has stoically resisted the influence of everyone, from Emperor Trajan, right up to Ceausescu.

S1E8 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel

59:02

The last leg of Simon's journey through South America takes him from Chile's Atacama Desert right down to Tierra Del Fuego, the most southerly inhabited place on Earth. In the Atacama, one of the driest places on the planet with is as little as 1mm of rain per year, Simon discovers shocking evidence of human pollution.

S1E5 • Simon Reeve's South America • 2022 • Travel

59:04

In central Thailand's forests, fertile plains and even city streets, nature finds a way of living alongside people. Spirituality can be found in human and animal relationships, both likely and unlikely. This bustling region is known as the nation's rice bowl - but even here, there are magical places to be found.

S1E2 • Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise • 2017 • Travel

58:32

He explores how the artistic life of three Japanese cities shaped the country's attitudes to past and present, east and west, and helped forge the very idea of Japan itself. In Kyoto, James reveals how the flowering of classical culture produced many treasures of Japanese art, including The Tale of Genji, considered to be the first novel ever written. In Edo, where Tokyo now stands, a very different art form emerged, in the wood block prints of artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. James meets the artisans still creating these prints today, and discovers original works by a great master, Utamaro, who documented the so-called 'floating world'. In contemporary Tokyo, James discovers the darker side of Japan's urbanisation through the photographs of Daido Moriyama, and meets a founder of the Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata, whose film Grave of the Fireflies helped establish anime as a powerful and serious art form.

S1E2 • The Art of Japanese Life • 2017 • Travel

59:13

The second of a two-part series, in which adventurer and broadcaster Simon Reeve travels deeper into beautiful and troubled Burma. Simon journeys up the vast Irrawaddy River to the old royal capital of Mandalay, home to an exotic market for precious jade. In Burma's mountainous highlands, he experiences the country's vibrant ethnic heritage at an extraordinary and explosive fire-balloon festival, Burma is a melting pot of different ethnic groups, and having seen first-hand the suffering of the Rohingya people on the first leg of his journey, Simon now travels secretly into one of Burma's many other conflict zones to meet a huge rebel army who have been fighting the Burmese military for decades.

S1E2 • Burma with Simon Reeve • 2018 • Travel

45:24

Famed for its painted churches, this is a region that's replete with ancient monuments.

S1E9 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel