Armchair travellers who miss their weekly voyeuristic jaunt in the Chilli Pepper can now revisit the places and faces of the second season, thanks to Ashley Dowds who, at the invitation of the editor of Country Life, kept a diary of his experiences during the filming of Going Nowhere Slowly, just GNS to its myriad fans.
Besides his stint on GNS, Dowds is a well-known South African TV personality, presenter and actor, currently playing Andrew McBain in the drama series Scandal.
In Red Car Diaries: Behind the Scenes of SA’s Favourite Travel Show (Struik), loads of photos and Dowds’s New Agey meditations about life on the road take us back to all those laid-back encounters with the extraordinary folk who inhabit the heartland of South Africa — from Goliath of Montague to Outa Lappies in Prins Albert and Ronnie of Ronnie’s Sex Shop near Oudtshoorn.
The diary isn’t just a rehash of what we saw on TV. As the subtitle suggests, Dowds takes us behind the scenes to give us his personal take on the events behind the shooting of each episode, including all the legendary breakdowns of that now famous red car.
Created, produced and directed by Dave Moore, GNS somehow “recalled the youthful energy of the Sixties, free love and the seeming immortality of the Age of Aquarius”, according to Dowds.
Although a book can never fully capture the vitality of the TV series, or the sheer scale of South Africa’s landscapes, just flipping through the pages will make you want to grab a few friends and head off down the lesser roads towards some wide and distant horizon to make a road movie of your own.