In episode one, Joanna recalls the best bits from her fascinating journey along the Nile, from Egypt to Sudan, looking back at her experiences including an unforgettable camel ride and her famous Dukhan beauty treatment.
In episode two, ‘Joanna Lumley's Postcards: Greece', Joanna takes a journey through her memories of her travelogue around mainland Greece - both the ancient and the modern. Beginning with Greece's most famous symbol, Joanna battles her fears and climbs the Acropolis in Athens to get a behind the scenes glimpse at the restoration process.
In episode three, ‘Joanna Lumley’s Postcards: Russia’, Joanna takes another look at her gorgeous travelogue adventures – this time she gives a personal insight into her mammoth trek across Russia aboard the Trans-Siberian Express. Having travelled to Moscow as a young model, Joanna recounts her experiences of 1960’s Soviet Russia and her expectations when she set off on her return, 50 years later. Beginning with a turbulent border crossing where the crew butts heads with Russian officials, Joanna tries her hand at the Russian language – before meeting the self-styled ‘Jimi Hendrix of bell ringing’ at the top of a church steeple in Irkutsk. Travelling through the snow-covered country, Joanna shares vodka with a fisherman in Lake Baikal and shares slightly more expensive gold-flaked vodka with a Russian Oligarch. The last stop sees Joanna in Moscow, seeing the sights in Red Square, and taking a tour of a nuclear bunker where the button was almost pressed – before coming full circle and recreating her 1960s modelling photoshoot in a Moscow train station.
In episode four, ‘Joanna Lumley’s Postcards: Greek Islands’, Joanna gives a personal insight into her odyssey across the Greek archipelago. Having - mistakenly - travelled to Poros as a young model, Joanna revisits the landscape that sparked her love affair with the Greek Islands. Aboard the 'Christianne B', Joanna learns from her host - shipping magnate Captain Sarkos - why the sea is so vital to the Greek people. On the island of Evia, the villagers of Antia engage Joanna in whistled conversation, and on Kos, we discover how Hippocrates’ holistic vision of healing shaped the way ancient hospitals were built. Travelling to the isle of Nisyros, Joanna treads carefully over the giant crater of a sleeping volcano, and then sets sail for Crete – the largest and strategically important island – for trade, and for military might. In Anogia, she meets a man who survived the Nazi slaughter of his village, and the descendants of the shepherds who sheltered the Cretan resistance fighters. Finally, Joanna joins the party as Crete’s largest Raki distillery sample their latest vintage
In episode five, ‘Joanna Lumley’s Postcards: Trans-Siberian Adventure’, Joanna revisits the lands of China and Mongolia aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, where her journey begins in Hong Kong, unrecognisable as one of Joanna's childhood homes, where her father's regiment was stationed.
Joanna returns to her adventures travelling to the source of the Nile. In this episode she explores the second source of the Nile: not the widely imagined Egyptian Nile, known as the White Nile, but instead the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia.
