Manchán’s Europe by Train (RTÉ One, Sunday, 6.30pm) is a travelogue, a plea for environmental good citizenship, and the first leg of a quest for atonement. Its presenter, the writer and documentarymaker Manchán Magan, has jetted around the world since he was in his early 20s, leaving behind a vast carbon footprint. Now he is trying a better way: a jaunt across Europe by train, boat and bike.
He starts in Dublin, where he hops on a ferry to Wales. There he travels to a quarry and plunges down a terrifying zip wire before catching a train to London and then the Eurostar to Belgium. After breakfasting on waffles he visits a museum dedicated to Tintin (to whom he bears a passing resemblance) and the Smurfs, then swings by a Congolese community centre for a spot of recreational dancing.
Even back in his days of clocking up air miles, Magan was a thoughtful travel journalist, not a person you’d ask for sun-holiday recommendations but someone who could tell you all about the restorative powers of a month in central Africa (where he went in his 20s when he needed to find himself and get his head straight).
His screen persona is that of a mildly eccentric professor with a passion for pottering about – the sort of tweedy boffin who could recite Joyce off the cuff yet might turn up for a meeting of department heads wearing odd socks. He is Wes Anderson’s idea of Alan Whicker, Hector Ó hEochagáin remixed by the Coen brothers.
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Magan is easy-going company, and there is something singularly calming about his screen presence. Crucially, he doesn’t come across as preachy or didactic. This is important when making television (and an accompanying podcast) that grapples with the climate crisis and its potential impact on the lifestyle of viewers, many of whom may feel they are already taxed to the eyeballs and have nothing more to give (their outgoings, of course, including the licence fee).
Magan is careful not to lecture the audience about how awful they are for doing what he did for decades. “I’m not out to campaign or to tell anyone else to do anything,” he says in one of his many thoughtful and engaging asides to the camera. “I’m aware I have flown more than one person should.”
He would also surely accept that his vision of travel is not for everyone. On each leg of the journey, for instance, he compares its carbon cost with that of making the same journey by plane. Obviously, flying is far more environmentally damaging. What the show doesn’t do, however, is compare the price – and it’s hard not to see Magan’s holiday as a version of the 19th-century grand tour: leisurely, cultured and strictly for the rich.
The time involved would surely be an issue for many people, for example. Arriving in Amsterdam, Magan chirpily declares that he could be back home in 18 hours or so, which is great if you have the time but more daunting if you have three kids in tow and a boss who expects you at your desk first thing on Monday.
Still, aesthetically the series is a joy, and you get a real sense of the places he passes through. In the Netherlands he stops off randomly in the town of Breda – which seems to be the Benelux equivalent of Mullingar or Athlone – and is delighted to discover a bike lane running through the station.
At St Pancras Intentional in London he waxes about the way train stations bowl him over – though you do wonder if he’s ever had to endure Dublin Connolly at rush hour when the trains are all running 20 minutes behind schedule and you can’t work out which platform to go to for yours, as it has suddenly vanished from the information boards.
There is a version of Europe by Train that would have gone out of its way to guilt-trip viewers for their city breaks in Reykjavik or weekends at the Primavera music festival in Barcelona. Magan understands that yelling at people is counterproductive. Instead he delivers an enjoyably watchable travelogue that, for all the potential impracticalities, makes this trans-Europe express seem like the best fun in the world.
