Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure

4 × 60"2018

This epic series is Joanna Lumley’s grandest and most challenging journey yet – a breath-taking odyssey from Venice to the Chinese border along the veins of the ancient Silk Road.

A vast network of paths that flourished from around 200 BC until the Middle Ages, the Silk Road stretched 10,000 miles from east to west, a meandering collection of routes that formed one of the most transformative super-highways in human history – a network of commerce which linked tens of millions of lives across the globe and was the prototype for globalisation.

Joanna’s eye-opening adventure sees her travel through an array of rich and diverse landscapes. Starting in Venice, the birthplace of Marco Polo, Joanna then blazes a trail eastwards, first to Albania and Istanbul, and then across Turkey. She visits the Caucasus cities of Tbilisi and Baku, before travelling to the Islamic Republic of Iran to see the beautiful city of Isfahan and the ancient ruins of Persepolis. Finally, Joanna arrives in central Asia, to witness the quintessential Silk Road city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan before crossing into Kyrgyzstan to its capital Bishkek and the Tien Shan Mountains.

Following in the footsteps of the merchants, armies and historical greats such as Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Tamerlane, Joanna meets the myriad peoples who still live and trade in the shadows of this once mighty path.

“[Joanna Lumley's] latest jaunt is a cracker... this is all about heritage and lavish scenery, ITV style, and for these purposes it's hard to think of a better guide.”
Gabriel TateThe Times (T2)