For those of us who had never heard of Ray Goggins, it was difficult to fathom how he had landed his own globe-trotting adventure show last year. His aura was Roy Keane mixed with a stern PE teacher convinced you’d been smoking behind the bike shed when, in fact, you were just a bit weedy and wimpy.
He was too crotchety to be an Irish Bear Grylls – whose love of sleeping in caves and eating lichen is softened by a wispy English poshness – while lacking the dash of a real-life Indiana Jones. Yet Indiana Jones is a defining vibe of Uncharted with Ray Goggins (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm), in which the former Special Forces man hauls random celebs around parts exotic. The idea is that, in pushing their bodies and minds to the limits, they’ll uncover deeper truths about themselves.
Still, there’s no doubting Goggins’s pulling power with the Irish A-list, and the fun, such as it is, of this so-so series comes from seeing famousish types operating outside their comfort zone. Last year Goggins dragged Leo Vardakar and the singer Lyra up a mountain in South Africa, then hauled Kneecap through the Arctic Circle in temperatures cold enough to freeze the stripes off their balaclavas.
Series two finds this anti ray of sunshine ploughing the same punishing furrow. But there is a twist. Goggins, though still refusing to smile, has ditched the sergeant-major routine: he no longer looks angry all the time. The idea that the only good celeb is a celeb weeping for their bed has also been ditched, and the atmosphere is more of a Boy’s Own romp as he leads the Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham and the comedian PJ Gallagher up the Himalayas.
