Eva Longoria: Searching for France review – this lovely travel show radiates charm

It’s light stuff with more than a touch of Emily in Paris to it, but the actor’s latest travelogue has enough passion to make it highly endearing TV ‘I’m Eva Longoria and I’m a SERIOUS Francophile!” So begins each instalment of the actor’s Gallic travelogue. France, says Longoria, “is my home away from home”, although she’s usually in the country for work, rather than to experience its abundance of “joie de vivre”. (She does, she notes, have some extracurricular experience with the French, having previously been married to the French-American basketball player Tony Parker for three years.) Now, though, she is on her own adventure, having returned to l’Hexagone for something “deeper”. Cut to a clip of our intrepid guide in a vineyard, getting acquainted with cabernet sauvignon grapes (“That’s my favourite!” she whispers animatedly), before we segue to her floating gracefully past the Eiffel Tower. Eva Longoria: Searching for France follows the equally alarmist-sounding Eva Longoria: Searching for Spain, and sets up the exciting possibility of an extended Longoria televisual universe, where the Desperate Housewives star makes her way across the entire globe (Eva Longoria: Searching for Equatorial Guinea, anyone?). It’s all been done before on television, of course, but the passion and lightness of touch here make it an endearing proposition. Continue reading...