Comedian Romesh Ranganathan travels to Albania to get an insider's guide to the country and to find out whether his own preconceptions about the Eastern European outpost are right.
Comedian Romesh Ranganathan travels to Albania to get an insider's guide to the country and to find out whether his own preconceptions about the Eastern European outpost are right. From a brief glance at an atlas, Albania has everything - beaches on the same coastline as Greece and Croatia, hills to trek in and stunning mountains. But for some reason all the average Brit knows about Albania is the old black and white clips from the communist era - and most of those have been mistaken for clips shot in Moscow.
On arrival, Romesh does indeed discover a country that is bleak and miserable, but then again it is raining, and even his native Crawley seems a bit lacklustre in the rain. Guided by local TV presenter and journalist Erjona Rusi, Romesh is taken on a whistle-stop tour of the country. He visits the beaches (apparently stunning in the summer, but when Ramesh arrives it is -10 degrees) and is hosted on a unique homestay in a beautiful isolated shepherd's village, where he is sent out on overnight wolf patrol and then embarks on a treacherous seven-hour journey into the mountains.
Along the way, Romesh tries to discover why Albania has remained a stubbornly unfashionable holiday destination, while many other formerly communist nations have leapt ahead. Romesh meets those at the extremes of this unique country, from the rural farmers to the billionaire playboys who live in the cities next to supermodels. He ends up with sheep poo mysteriously smeared across his back and, in a move he will doubtless come to regret, a tattoo emblazoned across his forearm. He finds a people desperate to throw off their reputation as the home of eastern mafia gangs, lots of Raki and a level of hospitality that he describes as 'second to none' as he gets an insider's guide to Albania.
Last on
Clip
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Romesh goes on a wolf hunt
Duration: 01:43
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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00:01
Yanni
Aria
Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Romesh Ranganathan |
Executive Producer | Emily Hudd |
Executive Producer | Morgan Roberts |
Director | Chris Cottam |
Production Company | Rumpus Media |
Broadcasts
- Sun 15 Jul 2018 21:00
- Wed 18 Jul 2018 23:15
- Fri 3 Aug 2018 02:30
- Sun 31 Mar 2019 22:00±«Óãtv Two England & HD only
- Sun 5 Jan 2020 22:00±«Óãtv Two except Northern Ireland & Scotland
- Sun 22 Aug 2021 22:00±«Óãtv Two except Northern Ireland & Scotland
- Tue 24 Aug 2021 23:15±«Óãtv Two Northern Ireland HD & Northern Ireland only