First viewed : July 1988
This was part of Janet Street- Porter's re-vamp of the BBC's youth programming, going out under the DEF II strand on BBC 2. The Rough Guide series of tourist guidebooks had been started six years earlier by Mark Ellingham and this was the TV equivalent. In some ways the show was a direct replacement for the axed No Limits though of course the locations were somewhat further away and the music featured was genuinely local- no more Huey Lewis and the News ! The presenters were Street-Porter's protege, the perma-shaded Magenta De Vine who'd worked with Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the arrogant Sankha Guha. Both cut their teeth on Network 7 and the show's fast cutting style reflected that. Despite the annoying presenters, it was a good show which didn't shy away from the darker side of the destinations such as highlighting Dublin's spiralling heroin problem or exposing the Yugoslav band Laibach as Croatian fascists.
The success of the first season led to a bigger budget and expansion to Rough Guide To The World, Rough Guide To The World's Journeys .... Islands and so on. Rajan Datar replaced Guha in 1992 then he was replaced with former Brookside actor Simon O' Brien in 1995. It survived the scrapping of the Def II umbrella but took a three year break after 1996 before returning for one series with Edith Bowman and Dimitri Doganis in 1999. There was a revival on Channel 5 with De Vine restored as a presenter which ran from 2007 to 2008.
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