James May: Our Man in India, review: wisely steers clear of Top Gear's diplomatic tussles
Marvel at the Taj Mahal, visit a Mumbai slum, take tea in Darjeeling. See an old fortress, travel by luxury train, attempt to spot a tiger. There is a TV law that all guides to India must feature these things, and James May: Our Man in India (Amazon Prime Video) obeys it.
“Right, you all know the recipe for a travel show,” May says at the beginning, which raises the hope that he might be about to up-end this and do something radical. Instead, he treads the same path as everyone else. He even has a local stand-up comedian as a guide, which is exactly what Al Murray did in his Indian travelogue three months ago. The key, though, is that May does it all in his trademark style (slightly bewildered Englishman, resigned to losing his dignity), which makes him entertaining company.
As with his previous series on Japan and Italy, the entertainment is derived from May’s reactions to everything going on around him, whether that be the traffic – kudos to him for cycling through Udaipur, where drivers either go left or right at roundabouts, however the mood takes them – or the aforementioned luxury train where, just past 9am, “the bar is absolutely banging” with British guests.
The show touches on colonialism, because everything does nowadays – the Indian comedian notes with amusement that British people are suddenly terribly sheepish about it, and far more troubled by it than Indians are – but May doesn’t go in for hand-wringing despite describing himself as “a bleeding heart Western liberal”. For much of the programme he avoids it altogether. Gazing at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial, he says: “It must be said that in this bit of India it’s quite difficult to shake off the legacy of Empire… but let’s give it a go.”
Later he dispenses some words of advice to prospective travellers: “Don’t think you’re going to live out some ‘Last Days of the Raj’ fantasy because modern India is far more interesting. Anyway, that sort of thing is a little bit embarrassing.” We’re a long way from the 2012 Top Gear special in India, which sparked a diplomatic row when the presenters were accused of lacking cultural sensitivity. Also, this show is going out on a global streaming service and will probably have more viewers in India than the UK.
May’s musings are themselves far more interesting than the scenes in which he is required to take part in various activities, Generation Game-style, such as making a spicy shepherd’s pie or some clay pots. They drag. The producers should just have let him wander about and give in to the chaos. As he observes here: “If you’re a foreigner, India always seems to be trying to beat you up.”
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