Timothy West and Prunella Scales take their canal travel series to India

Actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales have recorded a two-part special of their Great Canal Journeys series, which was filmed in India.

Channel 4 will air the hour long episodes of Great Canal Journeys which sees husband and wife team Timothy and Prunella explore the extraordinary Kerala backwaters.

The pair have been exploring canals for half a century, however this venture is their most ambitious voyage ever as Tim takes the helm to explore the Kerala backwaters, a one thousand mile network of palm-fringed lakes, rivers banked by rice paddies.

Along the way they also come across some very familiar-looking British-built canals. For millennia merchants from east and west have been drawn here to trade in ginger, cardamom and black pepper, making the backwaters a thriving trade route for spices.

Tim and Pru pass school bus-boats, laden cargo ships, and fishermen whose only tools are their hands. They explore a canal built by a local ruler to boost trade, make offerings at a temple raised up out of the waters, and, to Tim’s delight, Pru dusts off her dancing shoes to learn the traditional Kerlan ‘dance of the enchantress’.

They head on to what could be one of the most challenging voyage of Tim and Pru’s lives… Leaving behind the safe confines of the canals, they head out into the unknown waters of the Brahmaputra river in the far north east of India. Unpredictable and wild, it’s now rarely navigated, but in colonial times the river boasted a regular steam service carrying tea, bound for Britain.

Indian travel has been a family affair for Pru, whose father served in the Indian army, and whose grandfather shipped cloth in Bombay. Now Pru has the chance to see India through their eyes, as she follows in their footsteps along the old British trade route.

They are half a world away from home, but as long as they’re together there are no limits to adventure for Tim and Pru. – Channel 4

Great Canal Journeys airs later this year.