Miriam Margolyes, Wayne Sleep and six other pensioners check into a Jaipur guesthouse to discover whether £1,000 a month buys a better life in India than in Britain. Over three weeks they haggle with rickshaw drivers, queue at pharmacies for cut-price medication and sit through yoga classes whose instructors are decades younger. The first series, broadcast on BBC Two in January 2016, averaged 4.1 million viewers, making it the channel’s highest-rated factual programme that year.
Each subsequent run swapped cities and cast: Bill Oddie, Sheila Ferguson and Amanda Barrie sampled Kochi in 2017, while Stanley Johnson, Stephanie Beacham and Susan George toured Udaipur the following year. Production company Twofour kept the format intact, pairing sightseeing with blunt conversations about pensions, loneliness and mortality. The formula won a Rose d’Or, a Grierson and a Broadcast Award, plus a 2017 BAFTA nomination for Best Reality and Constructed Factual.
A spin-off, The Real Marigold on Tour, sent returning participants to Florida, Kyoto, Havana and Reykjavík, proving the premise travelled beyond the subcontinent. The fourth and final Indian series, filmed in Puducherry and Rishikesh, aired on BBC One in spring 2020 as the pandemic loomed, closing the franchise after fifteen episodes.
Production Details
BBC One / 4 Seasons / 15 Episodes / 2016
Main Cast
Selina Scott as Self
Stanley Johnson as Self
Miriam Stoppard as Self
Sheila Ferguson as Self
Paul Nicholas as Self
Susan George as Self
Peter Dean as Self
Amanda Barrie as Self
Stephanie Beacham as Self
Bill Oddie as Self
Rustie Lee as Self
Lionel Blair as Self
