Paul Merton In Europe

8:30pm Friday, July 6 on Prime

Reality Series

Paul decides it is time to finish his European tour in style, in Spain, and he soon discovers the country has much more to offer than just paella, sun and sangria. In the Spanish capital, Paul meets his tempestuous guide Arantxa and is introduced to a man named Don Justo (a former shepherd and ex-monk), who has spent the past half century building his own cathedral from donated and scavenged materials. Paul does not expect much and is therefore amazed to find that Don Justo’s masterpiece is actually full-sized and constructed in the Romanesque style.

8:35pm Friday, June 29 on Prime

Reality Series

Ever since his teachers forced him to learn metal work instead of French, Paul Merton has never really had the chance to learn about France… until now. There, he meets show jumpers who perform without horses, hears from a playwright who lived in a zoo with a panda, and learns the bittersweet story of a heartbroken graffiti artist. In Champagne, Paul discovers that boundary changes could make some locals very rich indeed. The intrepid explorer also visits a macabre museum devoted to the horrors of the world, and catches up with the man who has invented the world’s first full-body rollerblading suit…

8:30pm Friday, June 22 on Prime

Documentary Series

Paul’s European tour continues with a trip to Italy. His first stop is the elegant northern city of Milan, famed for two things – football and fashion. Paul’s guide, Genevieve, shows him how a local department store has gone one better by fusing the two together. After being dragged around the stores, Paul attends a game of calcio storico, a medieval mixture of rugby, football, wrestling and outright war. The game pitches two teams of locals dressed in 16th-century clobber against each other in a free-for-all stampede of gouging, stomping and head-bashing. In the Tuscan town of Petra Santa, Paul enjoys a rather more genteel time at the Association of Househusbands. For centuries Italian men have been the embodiment of the macho male. But in this small town a quiet revolution is taking place as husbands learn ironing, washing and cleaning. Paul learns one possible reason for this change in male attitude has to do with the fringe benefits they can earn in the bedroom…

8:30pm Friday, June 15 on Prime

Reality Series

Tonight, Paul resumes his travel in Ireland. In Dublin, he meets an enterprising pair who are selling Irish dirt to America, and an artist who lives in a 1930s house. Paul Merton’s journeys through the western edge of Europe continue in County Wicklow. Paul meets a reclusive figure called Willy who has turned his bog land into an Amazon paradise for 20 res cued monkeys, as well as a number of geese, dogs, ostriches and emus. Having fed this odd menagerie, Paul heads to County Cork to see the ancient Irish pastime of road bowling. Locals have gathered to watch two contestants attempt to fling a cannonball as far as possible down a country lane.

The player who completes the distance in the fewest throws is the winner – and the spectators love nothing better than placing bets on the outcome. Next, Paul travels to the lunar landscape of the Burren in western Ireland. These strange rock formations once lay on the ocean floor and represent 300 million years of compacted fish bone. Nearby, Paul visits the farmhouse used in ‘Father Ted’. The property belongs to Patrick, whose father appeared as an extra in the sitcom. But it seems that some of the locals were not amused by the show.

8:30pm Friday, June 8 on Prime

Documentary Series

Still in Germany, Paul visits an American Indian Club in the former German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany) before exploring the Wunderland miniature railway in the affluent city of Hamburg. His last stop in Germany is a visit to a family who make wooden sex toys! The next leg of the journey is the Republic of Ireland, starting in the ‘rebel’ county of Cork. Paul meets a solicitor called Colin who dreams of competing as a female synchronised swimmer, and an Irish monk who has opened an alternative sculpture park.

8:30pm Friday, June 1 on Prime

Reality Series

Comedian Paul Merton sets his sights on discovering the wonders of modern Europe – a continent of unparalleled diversity and the home of many of the globe’s oldest cultures. It is a land of huge contrasts – economically, geographically, religiously and culturally. Beginning in Germany, Paul meets the leader of a political movement known as the Apple Front, before enjoying a ‘chess boxing’ match in a Berlin sports hall. Next, he meets a former truck driver who practises the dying art of giant bunny breeding, and samples the delights of naked bowling. The first leg of Paul’s tour ends with a bizarre spa treatment in a hotel on the Austrian border.