Sacred Rivers with Simon Reeve (2014– ) User Reviews

interesting modern travelogue

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 17 March 2019]

Presenter Simon Reeve explores three of the world's major rivers, the Nile, Yangtze and Ganges, in a three episode BBC series. The Nile episode starts in Ethiopia around Lake Tana as Simon goes down the Blue Nile meeting up with the White Nile at Khartoum and down Egypt to its exit into the Mediterranean. The Ganges episode deals with the pollution as well as its spiritual importance. The Yangtze episode starts further down the river away from Tibet. It has more of a tourist feel with a constant guide until he goes to church. That's the intriguing new aspect of modern Chinese life.

Simon is a baby face with a scruffy beard. It allows him to present as fresh-eyed to these old places. I love Nile episode which has great local flavors and compelling inhabitants. There is a great variety to the locations. The Ganges is pretty good also although there is a similarity to the whole river. The pollution angle is an intriguing one to tackle. The Yangtze is the more restricted episode. Simon isn't able to visit Tibet. The start is fun with him imitating a frog. For the rest, he has a minder for his companion. It's not that he's restricted in his socially conscious commentary. He peppers much of the travelogue with his social views. It's just that China is no longer that exotic with its modern capitalism. That's why the church is so compelling. There are real feelings and real tears from the congregation. Overall, this is good travelogue through an interesting lens of religion and spirituality.

Interesting but very biased and dated

[ahlstrom-31-880802 · 6/10 · 28 February 2018]

The show takes the viewer around some interesting rivers, such as the Yangtze in China. It is fast moving and includes some unusual sights like a mega church in Nanjing, China. But the narrator betrays a consistent anti-western bias, and a 1960s-style ignorance of economic development. His comments implying that greed is unique to a capitalist system are remarkably ignorant. He also understands little about the countries he visits. When visiting Nanjing, the WW2 Nanjing massacre merited barely 5 seconds, though it was and is a defining event in the lives of Chinese people (but the Opium war merited a major segment, and he just labelled it as "from the West" and not some greedy politicians and monopolists In 19th century Britain). BBC needs to drop the dated 1950s and 60s style economics from their shows.