Rob & Romesh vs Lapland, review: nowhere on Earth is safe from their harmless pub banter
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This is a busy time of year for Santa and his elves. They’re making a list and checking it twice, and just when they’re trying to get all the presents sorted they have to contend with a bunch of TV presenters turning up to make programmes about Lapland. Gordon Ramsay, Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieux did it a couple of years ago, followed by Gregg Wallace (the memory of Wallace in a sauna, showing off his Millwall chest tattoo while whipping himself with birch branches, comes back to haunt me every Christmas).
Now we have Rob and Romesh vs Lapland (Sky Max), in which comedians Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan train as elves. It’s part of a fun series in which they try their hand at various new skills, from sprinting against Usain Bolt to performing in Swan Lake. Usually, the dynamic is that Ranganathan is miserable – no one can do deadpan expressions quite like him – and Beckett is unfailingly enthusiastic, and they mock each other mercilessly.
But it was reversed here, because Beckett hates being cold and also seemed quite scared of reindeer. “Turns out I’m going to be having to do a lot of the heavy lifting Christmas spirit-wise, and I’ll be fuelled both by a sense of Christmas joy and also by the knowledge Rob isn’t enjoying this at all,” says Ranganathan.
They were guided by a brilliantly perky character named Vanilla the Elf, who works in Lapland. However much Santa is paying Vanilla, he needs to give her a raise. She started by taking the pair on a three-mile snow trek. Beckett wasn’t enjoying himself. Or, as he put it: “If a bear came now I’d just turn around and go, ‘Eat me.’”
The rest of the programme involved Beckett hurling himself over a fence as he fled some reindeer (“they’re quite near, and they’re pointy”) and the pair immersing themselves in cold water for an “elf baptism”. They’ve just been commissioned for a sixth series, so there’s obviously a big Rob and Romesh fanbase out there.
I know some people can’t bear them. I have no feelings about them whatsoever – the show is the equivalent of hearing two blokes bantering away on the next table at the pub – perfectly pleasant but you wouldn’t necessarily want to date them. But if you can’t get enough of them, there’s Radio 2 – Beckett already has a Sunday show, and Ranganathan takes over from Claudia Winkleman next year on Saturdays.
