JOANNA LUMLEY’S DANUBE
Friday 30 May 2025, iTV, 9pm
In Episode Two of her Danube adventure, Joanna Lumley journeys deeper into the heart of Eastern Europe, uncovering the rich geography and spirited culture of Slovakia and Hungary. In Slovakia, she follows the river’s tributaries into the snow-clad Tatra Mountains — stark, dramatic peaks where the weather turns fierce and the cold bites hard. As she stands talking to a local meteorologist, his moustache and eyelashes freeze before her eyes — a vivid reminder of the elemental force of the landscape.
From the peaks to the plains, she then travels to Budapest, where the Danube divides the Hungarian capital into its historic halves, Buda and Pest. There, she takes to the water, explores the city’s Jewish heritage, and even hops aboard a charming children’s railway — a uniquely Hungarian institution, run almost entirely by young people.
Further south on the Great Hungarian Plain, Joanna meets the last remaining Ciskós — Hungary’s legendary horseback herdsmen — whose powerful connection to the land and their animals is mesmerising. She also turns her attention to the environment, highlighting the efforts being made to clean up the Danube’s growing plastic pollution problem. Throughout, her passion for geography and her growing admiration for the river itself, comes through clearly. She reflects that she hadn’t fully appreciated the Danube’s role as Europe’s longest and most significant river, shaping trade routes, borders, and civilisations for thousands of years. Using the river as a spine to connect the story of the continent, she traces a sweeping narrative — from a tiny trickle in the Black Forest to vast estuaries at the Black Sea.
