Gary Barlow's Wine Tour: Australia, review: like dining with your nice but boring uncle

Telegraph

11-04-2025

Popular myth dictates that in any city, you're never more than 6ft away from a rat. On terrestrial TV, you're never more than half an hour away from a travelogue by a middle-aged man. The genre reached its nadir with Gary Barlow's Wine Tour: Australia (ITV1). As a screen presence, the singer rivalled his Coronation Street namesake Ken in the excitement stakes. The cardigan-clad duffer taking us on a tour of Weatherfield's municipal car parks would be more entertaining than this televised tedium.
After a debut series in South Africa, Barlow was back. This time, he sampled the delights Down Under, where he just happened to be touring with his band, Take That. This meant multitasking. We were treated to footage from not one but three concerts as Barlow fitted filming around his day job. No wonder it all felt hurried and half-hearted.
He was joined by 'celebrity friends', starting with lunch in Sydney Harbour with his 'old mate', comedian and musician Tim Minchin. Their interactions displayed all the easy warmth of two near-strangers who'd met once on the red-carpet circuit and were now obliged to act like best buddies. Almost as awkward was a Hunter Valley picnic with fellow singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Even though she's the support act on Take That's tour, it was like a stilted first date with someone whose number you'd block on the bus home. Ellis-Bextor called the wine 'sleepy-time juice' but any drooping eyelids might have been down to the scintillating company.
Having launched his own range of wine (with signature piano key label, so you can avoid it in the supermarket), you'd think Barlow might offer insights into what he was eating and drinking, but nope. It was like dining out with your nice but boring uncle. Food was invariably 'amazing', wine 'delicious', scenery 'epic' or 'iconic'.
Even a trip to the pioneering Saint Peter seafood restaurant – where nose-to-tail eating has become fin-to-gill, with even the plates made from fish bones – was dragged down by the Barlow charisma vacuum. His repeated insistence on being 'just a little lad from Frodsham in Cheshire who can't believe his luck' might have been endearing if he hadn't been a multi-millionaire pop star for three decades.
All fluff and no substance, this was daytime TV that truly felt like it. I'm tempted to compare it to Jane McDonald's endless cruising programmes on Channel 5, but that would do a disservice to the Yorkshire diva, who at least looks like she's enjoying herself. Barlow had zero enthusiasm. Less of a wine tour, more of a whine tour.