Having terrified the audience members of Bake Off: Extra Slice and the contestants in Bake Off: The Professionals, the comedian Tom Allen is moving out of brisk, food-adjacent comedy and into the world of the travelogue for Tom Allen Goes to Town (Channel 4). This amiable pilot forgoes the glamorous locations that other presenters boldly explore – how brave they are to put themselves through those long, hot, tropical holidays – and instead plumps for a tour of the UK’s smaller towns, “to shine a light on the often overlooked gems that make Britain Britain”.
He begins by spending a week in Wakefield, which is, of course, a city. “How embarrassing, a terrible start,” he tells the live audience at the comedy/variety show he puts on to round off his trip. Fair’s fair – Tom Allen Goes to City doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way. Despite a slightly overstuffed setup, what emerges is a likable love letter to the underappreciated corners of the country – and a testament to the local characters, great and small, who make any community tick. (If the sight of non-socially distanced audiences enjoying a night packed in at the theatre is enough to make you choke on your steak pie, don’t worry, it was filmed pre-pandemic.)
Allen begins by going “the full Stacey Dooley”, putting out a plea on Twitter for somewhere to stay in Shakey Wakey. After interviewing various candidates and unleashing the full smutty look to camera on a man who offers him a semi, he ends up with the Jerome family, who take him on a tour of Wakefield’s biggest attractions. He also recruits Martin Kemp to be his special guest/production assistant (“Very much my Debbie McGee”) and, at the end of five days, puts on a show at the city’s Theatre Royal, using all of the local knowledge he has picked up. It is a lot to cram in: it goes from his arrival in the city to the performance in the first seven minutes. For a moment, I thought I had started playing the show on double-speed, as you can with podcasts, where you get the story in half the time while feeling as if you have stuck your head in a washing machine.
The bulk of the running time, then, is made up of the show, performed to locals and involving locals (and Kemp – local hero Jane McDonald appears not to have been available), recapping Allen’s finest discoveries. Although his trademark is on-the-hoof quips, a spiky blend of smut and insult, he is much more kind to Wakefield than you might expect. Even poor Judith, who has to leave the audience to put money in the parking meter and does so conspicuously, gets off lightly. He shows clips of the pilgrimages he made to Wakefield’s hotspots, plays games with some of the audience members and rounds it all off with impressive and what must be hastily observed standup.
Much of the appeal lies in the people Allen meets, from Pie Shop Karen to Trevor the Miner. The Hepworth gallery is, according to locals, “great for everyone, even if you’re posh or normal” and “like the Tate Modern, but not shit”. I am sure they will be printing both accolades on promotional material as soon as they can. The city is part of the rhubarb triangle and Allen finds out a lot about rhubarb from “this lady Janet, known locally as Rhubarb Janet”, who gives him the full history of this most versatile of veg. When Allen visits the National Coal Mining Museum for England, I worry briefly that it is about to go a bit Sightseers at the Pencil Museum, but Trevor is more than a match for him. “How much like the film Billy Elliott is it?” Allen asks, before inquiring about the availability of a calendar depicting miners in their shorts. Later, in the audience, Trevor starts talking about the miners scrubbing each other’s backs. For a second, Allen appears to be thrown, but he proves again and again just how nimble he is and pulls it back.
The hectic pace and near-frantic blending of formats is a shame, because it suggests a lack of confidence in what seems like a great and welcome idea, one that did not necessarily need so much tarting up. It is an Allen-heavy Live at the Apollo and, as a fan, I lapped that up. But then it goes a bit Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on a budget, with a half-hearted gameshow element, then it semi-spoofs DIY SOS, but also means it. These elements are fine, but I wondered how necessary it was to combine each and every one of them. As a travelogue, though, it really works, standing as a sort of ultralocalised, crowdsourced Travel Man that also doubles up as a self-esteem boost for towns (and cities) that are, as Allen points out, often overlooked.
