Matt Baker has thrilled his fans with a glimpse into his latest TV series, Matt Baker: Travels with Mum and Dad, where he joins forces with his parents, Janice and Mike, to explore the rustic charms of northern England, while also opening up about the future of their beloved show Matt Baker's Our Farm in the Dales.
Known for co-presenting Countryfile, Matt and his clan are no strangers to the limelight, having previously shared screen time on Matt Baker's Our Farm in the Dales. Speaking about the new series, Matt revealed, "We used to do these little trips away, where we would go and see how our wool was being processed in the wool mills, and so we just basically supersized that concept of these rural days out," reports Lancs Live.
Matt emphasized the convenience of short jaunts given farm responsibilities and his dad's age. "The key with it is they're always close to home because obviously, having a farm you can't go far. And plus, with dad being like 80, the reality of them planning to go on some sort of adventure was never going to be the case." He also spoke about why he thinks the family's latest show has been such a hit. "It seems to sort of happened off the back of that [Our Farm in the Dales] and it's been really successful. People have loved it, but we're now in our third series where I think the key is that we're not going far."
"We're not going abroad, and it's actually really relatable, and hopefully, from my generation's perspective, I'm kind of inspiring people to take the older members of their family out, to get these new experiences and to have fun and just to be together and experience stuff that they wouldn't really do themselves."
When quizzed about whether his family are involved in his new projects, Matt was quick to highlight the crucial role his wife Nicola plays in running the farm while they're off filming. As for the future of Our Farm in the Dales, Matt didn't dismiss the idea of another series. "There are no plans not to do it," he said, adding: "It's the question everybody keeps asking me, 'Are you doing more on the farm?"
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"We didn't do it as a TV programme idea, it sort of happened. It was an interesting story of how it actually evolved because I was sort of having meetings with different TV channels with our production company. When we started the work [on the farm], we'd actually started doing all of this stuff before we turned the cameras on, and I was having all these meetings, I was doing a Zoom and it was chaos. There was loads of stuff going on around us, and I was apologising, and then the channel was like, 'Would you film that?' So it was one of the things that was actually born out of reality."
"We were all surprised by how successful it was, but I'm really proud of it, and it's something that because although it was about farming, it was also about the difficult things that all families go through," he added. "And when you get those big decisions, where, for mum, choosing to change direction on the farm and to make decisions in families when you decide to do something different. And, we sort of filmed that process of deciding how to make things easier, going forward, and more sustainable."
"And honestly, the amount of correspondence that I've had from people saying, 'it's difficult to have those conversations' but even if you don't live on a farm, it's the same thing, families go through the same thing all the time, and we were doing it to a backdrop on the farm, which made it visual and practical to see those things happening. But actually, the conversations that it started were more important."
Discussing the conclusion of the series, Matt shared that it represented a "natural end of a chapter". Elaborating on the matter he said: "So that's why we didn't sort of decide to stop filming it, it's just the end of that process. It was a real, natural, end of that chapter, so that's why we haven't done any more."
