This new Jack Whitehall travelogue in which he sets out on a belated gap year in the Far East with his irascible father Michael must be doing something right as I decided to watch the second episode straight after I’d watched the first. And, trust me, it wasn’t because I wanted to see Whitehall Junior scratching his balls. Which he does during an overnight trip on the Orient Express.
There is plenty of fun to be had elsewhere in this episode as the two Whitehalls continue to explore Thailand and their relationship. They even occasionally bond when not clashing about Jack being sent away to boarding school when he was small. He has clearly never got over this - for comic purposes at least. As Jack points out himself – a couple of minutes after I’d written exactly the same thing in my notes – the more curmudgeonly his dad behaves, the more like a sulky teenager the bearded 29-year-old becomes.
So while dad has a day in at the 10-star hotel to write his autobiography and try to Facetime his wife, bored Jack meets up with a local parkour group. It doesn’t feel like a particularly Thai thing to do, but there is always a thrill watching freerunners dicing with death on tall buildings. Though while they jump across vertiginous beams Jack sensibly takes the stairs.
Elsewhere there is a great scene in a Buddhist garden where they meet a Mancunian monk called Pandit, who turns out to be a Fresh Meat fan. The giant horrific sculptures feature Bosch-like scenes from hell – eyes pecked out, people sliced in half or buggered by a man with a spear. That’s what happens in the afterlife if you’ve been naughty, apparently, which makes former theatrical agent Michael slightly nervous. Though he soon cheers up when they visit a shop that sells custom-made dolls and he adopts one. “Try not to send it to boarding school this time,” advises Jack.
Watch now on Netflix.
