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Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland

Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Part rediscovery, part revelation, they follow them as they take to the road and motorhome their w... Read all Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Part rediscovery, part revelation, they follow them as they take to the road and motorhome their way through Scotland's Highlands. Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Part rediscovery, part revelation, they follow them as they take to the road and motorhome their way through Scotland's Highlands.

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• Jan 17, 2022
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• November 16, 2021 (United States)
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Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland

Episode #204.

In the series finale, Miriam, Alan and Lala visit a dog healing center in L.A. and meet for a picnic with actress Saffron Burrows (Alan's ex) And in Las Vegas, a cabaret show leaves Miriam utterly speechless... for once!

S2 E204 - 45m 32s

Episode #203

S2 E203 - 43m 6s

Miriam and Alan visit a Santa Barbara 'drug den'. In Palm Springs, they enjoy drag bingo and join a gay knitting group. Then, it's on to L.A. where Miriam takes Alan to meet a relative she's never met in person.

Episode #202

S2 E202 - 46m 27s

Miriam and Alan head to the Isle of Skye for a magical boat trip and some wand whittling, before visiting a Jewish, LGBTQ+, vegan, anarchist café in Glasgow. Miriam and Alan finally end up in the U.S. to begin the American leg of their travels.

Episode #201

S2 E201 - 46m 16s

Miriam and Alan are back rip-roaring across Scotland... and beyond! They ride the Harry Potter Express steam train and head to the glorious Cairngorms National Park before Alan conducts an LGBTQ+ wedding.

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Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming get “lost” in Scotland after Miriam becomes Almost Australian 

Most of us know Miriam Margolyes as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies. Some recognize her as Aunt Prudence Stanley in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries or as Sister Mildred in Call the Midwife. In script-free real life, Margolyes is an octogenarian who refers to herself as a Jewish lesbian. 

Margolyes enjoys chatting with people, with good friends such as actor Alan Cumming, and with people she has just met. She has no visible hesitation walking up to a person on the street and asking them direct and probing questions that begin extended conversations. A few years ago, I was standing with others in the lobby of the Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand in London, waiting for a matinee performance to begin, when Margolyes entered. At four foot something, wide around the tummy and waist with huge breasts and wild curly grey hair, she resembled an aging sprite or maybe Mrs. Santa Claus. She was having difficulty walking, so she sat down on a step and began chatting with a member of the theater staff. As she spoke with him, she beamed. Her smile could heat up the Arctic. 

Over the past few years, due to age and illnesses, her movement has become restricted. She uses a cane, walker, or drives a small cart to get around. Her short, squat body and restrained walking do not stop her from exploring her world, or should I say worlds. 

In recent years Margolyes has made several non-fiction TV series which feature her traveling through meaningful places of her life. I learned about this phase of her career from my friend Lois Farber who was deeply impressed by the docu series Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland which is streaming, is available on a few PBS stations, and on region 2 disc. With her old and dear friend Alan Cumming, Margolyes travels through Scotland where interesting, and occasionally fascinating, occurrences take place. Cumming is Scottish, and Margolyes has Scottish ties. 

Over two seasons in 2021 and 22, they share their firsthand knowledge of Scotland, and, even more importantly, ride side by side in a huge trailer which Cumming drives, sharing their friendship. They discuss memories of childhood, good and bad, plus their current lives. Cumming arranges for a Scottish mill to create a special tartan for them. They laugh and find joy in each other as their foibles come more and more to the surface. For instance, Margolyes eats red onions like apples! Eventually they explore parts of the Western United States together. 

Just before making that series,she struck out on her own for two months through 10,000 kilometers of mainly rural Australia. Decades ago, she partnered with an Australian woman, and has spent years there. In 2013 she became an Australian citizen. In Almost Australian, which is streaming on Netflix, she sets out to learn what her Australia is all about. What does “mateship” mean? How do the First Nation people interact with Caucasian Aussies? In the Northern Territories and the Gold Coast, she encounters problems. Farmlands have dried up, animals have perished. She visits mining areas and discusses the pros and cons of taking ore from the earth. She admires the modernity and greenery of urban areas. Wherever Margolyes goes, she talks to strangers. She learns from strangers. Some do not like her, but she keeps the conversation going. 

Miriam Margolyes, as well as Alan Cumming, may be celebrities, actors; however, in these TV documentaries they show a different side of themselves, a keen interest in the worlds in which they live and a rapport with people like themselves as well as those who are quite different!

Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Hollywood actors Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming rip-roar across Scotland and beyond, as they take in some spectacular and far-flung locations, reconnect with old friends and rekindle old memories

Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming visit Ullapool and Glencoe on their love letter tour of Scotland, and fulfil Alan's dream of writing and performing a song in Gaelic

Hollywood actors Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Part rediscovery, part revelation and always a total riot.

Series 1 Episode 3

Miriam and Alan finish their Scottish odyssey driving from Inverness to Edinburgh

Series 1 Episode 2

Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming visit Ullapool and Glencoe

Series 1 Episode 1

Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming take a trip down memory lane in Glasgow and Carnoustie

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Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming revisit personal histories in Lost in Scotland

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Fiona Sturges

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

It’s become something of a fad to pair up actors or comedians on TV and send them on jaunts to Britain’s most sumptuous beauty spots to see how they rub along. These shows end up being part-travelogue, part odd-couple farce as, between aerial shots of the landscape, viewers are urged to laugh at the bickering and the navigational fails.

We’ve already had Gyles Brandreth and Sheila Hancock tootling around Britain’s waterways in Great Canal Journeys , and Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan playing exaggerated versions of themselves on The Trip . Perhaps the biggest success has been Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing , now on its fourth series. Who knew that two men standing in waders and mulling over their mortality would capture the heart of a nation?

Now it’s the turn of the actors Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming to head north to Scotland in a motorhome in Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland . As odd couple set-ups go, this is not as contrived as it seems since the pair are close pals — a fact that becomes apparent when, on seeing Margolyes struggling up the steps into their new abode, Cumming clamps two hands on her backside and gives her a hearty shove.

More importantly, both have connections to Scotland, meaning their travels are infused with the melancholy of their respective histories. Margolyes’ Jewish grandfather settled in Glasgow after escaping persecution in Belarus 120 years ago. And so, in the opening episode, she takes a detour to view a front door squeezed between two shopfronts on Allison Street, where her father, Joseph, grew up in a single room alongside his parents and four siblings. “It makes me feel a bit sad,” says Margolyes, her voice wobbling. “I wish they could see that we’ve come back.”

Cumming, meanwhile, spent much of his childhood on the Panmure estate in Carnoustie, where his father, a violent bully who terrorised his children, worked as head forester. Gazing around the gardens, he observes: “This would be a lovely place to live if [I] hadn’t had massive childhood trauma in it . . . Oh Miriam, I’m sorry, I’ve made you cry.”

Elsewhere, tears give way to laughter as Margolyes tells ribald stories from her past, such as the time she took her driving test knickerless, and Cumming cheerfully disposes of the contents of their chemical toilet. In the pantheon of celebrity road trips, this is among the superior versions as, amid the scenery and sight gags, it conveys something profound about memory and the ways we are shaped by our pasts.

On Channel 4 from November 16 at 9.15pm

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International Edition

'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland' — release date and everything you need to know about Channel 4's new travel series

'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland' will see the unlikely duo travelling around the country.

Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland will see the two actor friends travelling all over Alan's homeland in an upcoming Channel 4 travel series.

Miriam Margolyes, who's best known for her portrayal of Mrs Sprout in the Harry Potter films, struck up a friendship with Cumming, who's screen hits include GoldenEye and The Good Wife , while appearing on The Graham Norton Show . 

During a recent Silver Pride event, Alan confirmed he was making the series, saying... “I’m going to go around Scotland — a travel show, around Scotland, in a van with Miriam Margolyes… Who knows what that’ll be like!”

Here's everything we know so far...

When will 'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland' be on TV? 

This three-part series will begin on Channel 4 Tuesday Nov. 16 at 9.15pm. 

What else do we know about 'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland'? 

A statement from Channel 4 gives a hint of what the pair will be getting up to...

"Hollywood actors Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming get cosy in a mobile home, as they roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Their wit and banter mixing comedy and confession with the utterly outrageous. Part rediscovery, part revelation, total riot, they are on a mission to uncover the country of their youth, as they roll along Scotland’s cities, Highlands, and into its wildest places.  

"A journey that begins in their once mutual home of Glasgow and up the West coast, across the far Highlands, and back down the East side, as the duo encounter a fascinating cast of Scottish characters from a Gaelic rapper and modern witches to a ‘Zen golfer’ and a noble Lady that Alan believes could be his distant relative!" 

Where else will Miriam and Alan be going during the show?

The series was filmed between June and August of 2021 and the pair were spotted by the staff at Shopmobility Dingwall, which borders the Highlands, when they popped in. Could the two stars have been enjoying the mountains or did they pop in to see Dingwall Castle, which was established by Norse settlers in the area in the 11th century? We shall see...

Alan's Instagram account also provides us with a few clues as to where the pair have been, with the star very excited at the prospect of visiting Cawdor Castle, a few months ago. 

The Castle is connected to Shakespeare's famous play, MacBeth, with the title character made 'Thane of Cawdor', as Alan hints at in this video. Could the pair be checking out the famous literary character's digs?  

A post shared by Alan Cumming (@alancummingsnaps) A photo posted by on

He also shared a clip of himself getting a chairlift up a mountainside in Glencoe, an area famed for its natural beauty and wildlife such as red deer and golden eagles. The infamous Glencoe Massacre also took place here in 1692. Where is Miriam though? We hope she didn't slip off before they got to the top!  

Here he is catching some rays with Miriam. (This one doesn't tell us much about where they're going, but we love it just the same). 

...and finally, here's Alan watching his pal eat a "seriously important soup" called Cullen Skink. A spot of detective work (thanks Google) tells us this is "a thick Scottish soup made of smoked haddock, potatoes and onions. An authentic Cullen skink will use finnan haddie, but it may be prepared with any other undyed smoked haddock." 

But more importantly, the web tells us this soup is a local specialty in the town of Cullen in Moray, on the northeast coast of Scotland, so it seems we can expect our two intrepid travellers to be heading that way! 

How did Channel 4 come up with the idea for 'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland'?

Channel 4 bosses reportedly came up with the idea for a travelogue when they saw the pair hit it off on The Graham Norton Show .

“The reason they’ve asked me to do this is that we went on Graham Norton‘s Show … Miriam was there, showing her knickers, and I was like, ‘No Miriam, no!’ I slapped her down a couple of times when she was trying to get a bit saucy,” says Alan.

Is there a trailer for 'Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland'?

There's no trailer yet, but we'll be sure to post it here as soon as one lands!

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Sean is a Senior Feature writer for TV Times, What's On TV and TV & Satellite Week, who also writes for whattowatch.com. He's been covering the world of TV for over 15 years and in that time he's been lucky enough to interview stars like Ian McKellen, Tom Hardy and Kate Winslet. His favourite shows are  I'm Alan Partridge, The Wire, People Just Do Nothing  and  Succession  and in his spare time he enjoys drinking tea, doing crosswords and watching football. 

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MIRIAM AND ALAN: LOST IN SCOTLAND

Premieres Mondays, June 19 and 26, 2023 beginning at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream now with KPBS Passport !

Miriam Margolyes (CALL THE MIDWIFE; HARRY POTTER) and Alan Cumming (MASTERPIECE MYSTERY; THE GOOD WIFE) get cozy traveling in a mobile home, mixing wit and memories as they return to their Scottish roots.

MIRIAM AND ALAN: LOST IN SCOTLAND is part rediscovery, part revelation, and a total laugh riot, as the two beloved actors embark on a mission to uncover the country of their youth.

EPISODE GUIDE:

Episode 1 : premieres Monday, June 19, 2023 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV - Starting in Glasgow, Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming visit the street where Miriam's Jewish family first lived in Scotland, then journey north into the Highlands; Alan learns about his ancestral past at Cawdor Castle.

Episode 2 : premieres Monday, June 19 at 10:45 p.m. on KPBS TV - Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming visit Ullapool and Glencoe on their love letter tour of Scotland. They meet Susan, a pagan witch, who involves them in an ancient healing ritual, and Alan fulfils his dream of writing and performing a song in Gaelic.

Episode 3 : premieres Monday, June 26 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV - Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming finish their Scottish odyssey driving from Inverness to Edinburgh, and enjoy some vegan white pudding, kosher haggis, 'Zen golf' and dressing up along the way.

Watch On Your Schedule:

Season 1 and Season 2 are available to steam on demand with KPBS Passport , a benefit for members supporting KPBS at $60 or more yearly, using your computer, smartphone, tablet, Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire or Chromecast. Learn how to activate your benefit now .

Distributed by American Public Television

This program is not currently available in ABC iview. You might like similar programs to this, shown below. Learn more in ABC iview Support.

Miriam & Alan: Lost In Scotland

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Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming roll back the decades and return to their Scottish roots. Part rediscovery, part revelation and always a total riot.

• Miriam Margolyes, Alan Cumming

Miriam Margolyes & Alan Cumming’s Friendship Goes Way Back

The pair have joined forces on a new show that sees them road-trip around Scotland.

Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming have taken holidaying in the UK to a whole new level, renting out a motorhome in Scotland’s Highlands and inviting Channel 4 and their fans. Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland premiered on Channel 4 on Nov. 16 but how did the two acting icons meet? Their roots run deep in Scotland and the pair have been showbiz pals for decades.

Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland opened in Glasgow where Margolyes and Cumming revealed they both have shared family history. However, they can’t quite remember where they first met.

When asked how they know each other Cumming told Channel 4, “Well we can’t quite remember exactly! It must have been in the early nineties because I shot this film with Ian Holm about FR Leavis ( The Last Romantics ) and that was who Miriam was taught by at Cambridge. At some point around that time, I was with Ian and we chatted to you [Margolyes] about FR Leavis so that was probably the first time, but we’ve met a lot over the years at various backstage things.”

He continued: “We’re sort of like showbiz friends who meet over the years at various things and can’t quite place it. I shot that film in 1991 so it’s been a long time ago!”

However, the pair can pinpoint the exact moment the idea for Lost In Scotland was born. Margolyes revealed that it came to her during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show . The pair shared the sofa that night with Daniel Radcliffe, Sharon Horgan, and Craig David. They had undeniably chaotic chemistry and Cumming said, “I’d been talking to Blink Films (the production company behind the series) about doing something about Scotland. They suggested perhaps I did it with someone else, so I suggested Miriam as I thought we’d make a good oddball couple! And then they had the idea of the van and it all went from there.”

In the series, the pair visit Cumming’s mum and family home where he speaks openly about his childhood growing up with an abusive father. Margolyes also sees the neighbourhood where her grandparents settled after they left Belarus to escape persecution. It was the place that her father grew up. They also tick eating Haggis, meeting Gaelic singers, and scaling Glencoe off their Scottish bucket list.

Travelling with a friend can be a little tense at times but Margolyes revealed that they enjoyed in so much they’d happily do it again. “I felt like I was on holiday with a glorious companion. It was delightful and I would do it again in a shot,” she said. “We could go anywhere you’d like. Let’s go somewhere we don’t know – let’s go to Tallinn or somewhere like Kentucky.”

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Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland review – a large pile of anticlimaxes

Margolyes and Cumming can’t be as lost as the poor viewers taken on this vapid and exhausting tour of Caledonia – complete with a cringeworthy encounter with the locals

A s Macbeth so nearly rightly said, a bad travelogue is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Minus the fury, this is a fair summary of Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming’s Caledonian travels – including a trip to Cawdor Castle – in Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland (Channel 4), the first in an unaccountable and possibly unconscionable series of three hour-long episodes to follow them trundling round the blameless land in a campervan, “rediscovering” their roots.

Cumming grew up on the Panmure estate, near Carnoustie, on the east coast, where his father was head forester. Margolyes’s Jewish immigrant family settled in Glasgow. One of the duo’s first visits is to Allison Street, where her father lived as part of a family of six in a couple of rooms before going on to become a doctor. In the first of what will become many anticlimactic moments, they get no further than the (clearly new) front door of the building that housed them back in the day. There’s also a cringeworthy moment when, as Margolyes is reminiscing, a Glaswegian man on a mobility scooter stops to chat (he is subtitled for viewers) and neither presenter is quite comfortable with the idea. “We’re having a tender moment!” cries Cumming, a little too snappishly to be funny.

Then it’s on to a tartan mill, where Cumming has commissioned a tartan to commemorate their trip. “Aliam” comprises stripes of turmeric (for the soil of Margolyes’s adopted home, Australia), blue (for Hanukah), lilac (for lesbianism;she is gay – you’ve probably heard), green (for Cumming’s rural childhood), and pink (“a lusty colour and we’re both quite lusty people”) on a yellow (his favourite colour) background. They have some of it made into a toilet seat cover but Margolyes, because this is her shtick, asks “if I can have my shit first?” “I’m all for that,” says Cumming, and withdraws.

Margolyes’s shtick is not quite as relentless as it has been up until now in her late television career renaissance. It is nice for it to take something of a back seat here, when it has begun to seem effortful and wearying for purveyor and viewer alike. Still, there is enough left to satisfy those whose appetite for her humour remains unabated. We learn that her knickers fell off during her first driving test (dearth of elasticity rather than abundance of lustiness), get an “as the actress said to the bishop” in and various play made with hoses (“You want to get your nozzle out”) and roses (“massive hips”) in the garden. Godspeed.

A thread running through the episode is whether Cumming is related to the priapic first baron of Cawdor, for whom many of his female ancestors worked below stairs and to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. A DNA test is taken by him and Liza Campbell, daughter of the 6th earl. The results are teased to the point of exhaustion before joining the pile of anticlimaxes, alongside the unseen flat and the unseen house in Fordyce bought by Margolyes and Bill Paterson, with whom they walk through the village that they both fell in love with 40 years ago.

A more justifiable – and, in a twisted way, welcome – anticlimax was Cumming’s visit to his old home, where he grew up with an abusive father and which holds nothing but unhappy memories of being neglected, terrorised and traumatised. His quiet, charming gentleness that has brought out the best in Margolyes seems to have brought out the very worst in his father. “He was particularly cruel to me and my brother,” he tells Margolyes matter of factly, as they emerge from the shed in which his father once forcibly shaved his head. “But everyone was scared of him.” They sit in the sun and wait for the shadows to recede. Cumming decides that, although they have permission to go into the house from the current owners, he won’t. He looks around the garden instead. “It would be a lovely place to live if you didn’t have massive childhood trauma in it.”

The rest is filler. If you’re in the mood for the gentlest of travelogues, the slightest of narratives and some nice views, you won’t be disappointed. If you are looking for anything else, you’ll probably be strutting and fretting quite a bit before the hour is done.

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Miriam Margolyes shares her Scottish roots

TV chatshow favourite Miriam Margolyes delves into her Scots family background this weekend.

She joins The Big Scottish Book Club to recount the story of how her family moved to Scotland in the late 19th century, and settled in Glasgow.

National treasure Miriam looks back on her extraordinary life and working with everyone from Scorsese to Streisand in This Much is True, and although she is legendary for telling outrageous anecdotes, she telling the moving story of how her father was accepted to study at Glasgow University, then was called up to serve in World War I – and how her grandfather was able to help him avoid a call-up.

This week’s episode is themed around memoir, as host Damian Barr looks at the stories we tell about ourselves with this week’s guests.

Poet, novelist and former Scots Makar, Jackie Kay discusses Red Dust Road which traces her adoption by white working-class Scots and her journey to Nigeria to find her birth parents. Her story is especially moving when she reveals her birth mother’s sister scathing comment at her funeral.

The Big Scottish Book Club (from left) Jackie Kay, host Damian Barr, Pete Paphides, Miriam Margolyes, and John Gerard Fagan (Photo: IWC / Banijay/ Daisy Honeybunn)

Pete Paphides talks about his experience of growing up in a Greek-Cypriot family based in the Midlands in Broken Greek.

Filmed with a live audience at Troon Concert Hall, there’s also spoken word performance from John Gerard Fagan – who speaks about his experienced when writing his book Fish Town in episode 30 of the Scottish Field podcast, which you can listen to HERE – and the Sing in the City Book Group give their verdict on one of this week’s reads.

The Big Scottish Book Club will be shown on Sunday, December 5, on BBC Scotland, from 10-11pm.

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Jon stewart mocks media for trump trial coverage: “what the f*** are we doing”.

'The Daily Show' host slammed the likes of Jake Tapper, Nicolle Wallace and Erin Burnett for their breathless reporting of the former president's New York criminal trial.

By Abid Rahman

Abid Rahman

International Editor, Digital

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The gloves came off on The Daily Show on Monday night, as host Jon Stewart excoriated the news media for its overly extensive and, at times, incredibly dramatic coverage of former President Donald Trump ‘s New York criminal trial.

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Stewart then proceeded to show clips of somber media self-reflection — from the likes of former CNN host Brian Stelter, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow — discussing the need to move away from the often breathless, speculative and needless coverage that Trump received during his term as president.

“So brave. Well done,” said Stewart mocking the journalists for pushing the “lessons learned” narrative. “I think, for this trial, we will see the seeds of that introspection bear fruit. Or, we will learn that learning curves are for pussies,” he added, with an immediate cut to Trump’s current trial coverage showing the likes of Wallace billing the case as “the trial of the century,” and trotting out the old Trump cliché of the “walls closing in” around the former president.

Stewart asked, “Perhaps, if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand, and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details, perhaps that would help?”

Then followed clips of cable news’ wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s commute to and from court each day. “Seriously, are we going to follow this guy to court everything day? Are you trying to make this O.J. [Simpson]? It’s not a chase. He’s commuting. So, the media’s first attempt, the very first attempt on the first day [of the trial] at self-control, it failed.

“What the fuck are we doing?” an exasperated Stewart asked at one point.

Stewart then came to his point, suggesting that the nonstop coverage of the banal and meaningless goings-on is numbing people to the actual, salient news.

“At some point in this trial, something important and revelatory is going to happen. But none of us are going to notice because of the hour spent on his speculative, facial tics,” he said. “If the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bullshit is earth-shattering, we won’t believe you when it’s really interesting. It’s your classic boy-who-cried-Wolf Blitzer.”

He concluded: “We got a long ways to go here. It’s the first day of the first of [Trump’s] 438 trials to come. Pace yourselves. And if [the media is] bored, you can always start planning how you’re going to be covering his next trial and the sober mea culpas you’ll deliver during his next term as president.”

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