Toughest Place To Be A ....

2011
Toughest Place To Be A ....

Seasons & Episodes

  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1

EP1 Taxi Driver Mar 10, 2013

A London cabbie tests his skills on some of the most chaotic streets in the world in Mumbai India. His host is Pradeep Sharma, who lives with his extended family in a tiny two bedroom house and earns less than ten pounds a day for his long and stressful shift. As Mason takes his life in his hands to learn the Knowledge Mumbai style, he also begins to understand the plight of the millions of migrant workers who flood into India's cities looking for work. They often encounter poverty, discrimination and hostility. Inspired by their sheer determination, Mason's final challenge is to go solo in an Indian taxi, picking up passengers, finding his way around and earning his crust in the madness of the Mumbai rush hour. It's like 'Mad Max meets the Kumars' as Mason puts it.

EP2 Farmer Mar 17, 2013

Dairy farmer Richard Gibson is swapping the damp surroundings of Devon to live and work with Samburu tribesmen, who herd their cattle in the parched and desolate mountains of northern Kenya. British farmers have suffered from low milk prices and squeezed margins but it is nothing compared to the struggles of Richard's host, village elder Lemerigichen. In recent years drought has decimated the herds in this region, forcing many Samburu off their land and into the poverty of local towns. Richard launches himself into an alien lifestyle - sleeping rough in the wilderness, drinking cow's blood and digging and digging to find water. The two men form a touching bond through the love of their animals and the basic drive to support their families, whilst Richard gains an insight into what it is like to tend a herd when surrounded by lions, leopards and hyenas.

EP3 Firefighter Mar 24, 2013

Firefighter Neil Fairhall is leaving his fire station in Hayward's Heath and heading to the Amazon to fight some of the biggest forest fires in the world. While a lot of a British firefighters' time is spent attending small fires and false alarms, during the dry season in Mato Grosso state, the Jatoba Fire Brigade, part of Alianca da Terra, can work for four days at a time trying to save the forest from fire. As Neil trains and works with fire chief Edimar Dos Santos Abreu and his crew, he learns that the blazes are often started deliberately in order to clear the forest for illegal agriculture and that this now represents the single biggest threat to the Amazon. It is tough and brutal work as a team of just five men work across an area the size of England in a seemingly hopeless battle.

EP4 Bus Driver Mar 31, 2013

London bus driver Josh returns to the chaotic streets of Manila in the Phillipines.

EP5 Fisherman Apr 07, 2013

Andy Giles returns to the fishing community in Sierra Leone whose survival was threatened.

EP6 Binman Apr 21, 2013

Wilbur Ramirez revisits Jakarta to see if he can improve the lives of the city's binmen.
8.6| 0h30m| TV-14| en| More Info
Released: 13 February 2011 Ended
Producted By: BBC
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bmtfq
Synopsis

Toughest Place To Be A... is a BBC Two television documentary which offered various working or retired professionals in the United Kingdom a different and more challenging working environment in the same profession they worked in. These individuals travel to a foreign country to learn and work under the new environment for ten days. First broadcast in February 2011, a total of fifteen episodes were produced since.

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Reviews

James These series somehow resemble the marvellous "Who do you think you are?" in using a simple idea to explain a very great deal. Just as "Who do...?" was able to cover much of the recent history of the UK (and hence the world) on the basis of the family trees of individual people, so "Toughest Place" does much to explain (or at least present in chilling detail) the world we live in today, by the simple expedient of getting an experienced practitioner of a given job from the UK to do the equivalent job in a Thi..., er..., developing country (by the end of most episodes, the viewer may feel inclined to return to the former term, rather than its more politically correct successor).Mainly men, only occasionally women, the people who do the given jobs - many in the London area - invariably think of themselves as tough, no-nonsense, well-organised individuals who have little space for sentiment as they work hard to do a given job as well as they can.And then they get transported into one of the megacities out there - in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Mexico or wherever, and in each case the reaction is more or less the same. The emotions so readily on display then are all the more poignant, given that our heroes come in several different colours, and are from several different backgrounds. Yet, touchingly, all are rapidly convinced as to how British, and how well-off, they are, once they confront the realities in which most of our planet's citizens still live! And since the people they learn a new version of their trade from are in some sense the success stories in the countries travelled to, given that they have a steadyish job and some kind of tiny "prospects" for that reason, the message is delivered all the more strongly. It's educational and gripping TV that should not - must not - be missed.