More Tales from Northumberland   Starring: Robson Green Distributor: ITV Studios Global Entertainment RRP: £14.99 3711536763 Certificate: E Release Date: 13 April 2015

Is it just me or does there seem to have been an explosion of shows involving celebs of variable quality trolling around the countryside so that we don’t have to? Ex-politicians take us away on fantasy train rides; comics are spotted either recreating a famous boat ride or a car trip down into south America. Adding to this plethora of reasonably cheap travelogues is Robson Green’s trips around his beloved Northumberland.

More Tales From Northumberland (2015. 8 Eps). This single disc DVD set represents the show's second series and follows the same format with the aforementioned Mr Green wandering around telling you how beautiful the area is, even though you can patently see it on your own screen well enough to make your own mind up. Not content with just walking aimlessly about, which, after all, would not make for particularly dynamic television, Mr Green also gets up to all sorts of shenanigans, from skinny dipping in the North Sea in the middle of the night to diving for shipwrecks.

Robson is a good choice of presenter for the show and his enthusiasm for the county of his birth comes through. Having pretty much covered all of the more noteworthy attractions of Northumberland in the first series, the second has Robson going off the beaten track to places even he has never previously visited.

The series entertains, whilst at the same time highlights the fact that the north is not full of dark satanic mills, but rather has an abundance of interesting and beautiful landscapes. The show consists of eight episodes in total which cover the hidden secrets of the county, the national park, the coquet river, hidden treasures, industrial heritage, natural wonders, the south east and the borders.

The single disc is of the vanilla sort, apart from English subtitles, the disc contains no extras.

7

Charles Packer