What’s it called?

Dark Tourist

What’s it about?

One man’s quest to visit as many weird and dangerous places as he can without getting shot, kidnapped, nuked, eaten (by vampires), scared to death, arrested, inducted into a cult, forced into an animal sacrifice or in any other way mis-treated or exposed to harm. This sort of journeying to the world’s less salubrious parts is known as Dark Tourism (hence the name of the show) and it’s defined as tourism to places generally associated with death and tragedy.

Who’s in it?

The presenter is New Zealand journalist David Farrier, a sort of Louis Theroux-type figure who seems happy to go where others would fear to often wearing only shorts and a fetching grin. So across the eight episodes of the Netflix series he visits (among other places) a former Soviet nuclear testing ground in Kazakhstan where he swims in the appealingly-named Atomic Lake; the Colombian city of Medellin, where he travels around with a Pablo Escobar lookalike and meets the drug lord’s personal hitman, Popeye; Benin, where he takes part in a voodoo ceremony that involves the sacrifice of multiple birds and a shopping trip for dried puppy heads; and Milwaukee, where he goes on a tour of the spots at which notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer dispatched his victims.

What’s so good about it?

It makes you realise that even at its rowdiest, a fortnight in Magaluf is a breeze compared to some places that tourists fetch up.

Fun fact …

Part of the Benin voodoo ceremony involves having neat gin spat at you.

For fans of ...

The Misadventures Of Romesh Ranganathan, An Idiot Abroad, anything with Ross Kemp in it that isn’t set in Walford.