• 74
    watchers
  • 236
    plays
  • 116
    collected
  • 2012-01-29T00:00:00Z on BBC Two
  • 1h
  • 3h (3 episodes)
  • United Kingdom
  • English
  • Documentary
Toughest Place To Be A... is a BBC Two television documentary which offered various working or retired professionals in the United Kingdom a different and more challenging working environment in the same profession they worked in. These individuals travel to a foreign country to learn and work under the new environment for ten days. First broadcast in February 2011, a total of fifteen episodes were produced since.

3 episodes

Season Premiere

2012-01-29T00:00:00Z

2x01 Bin Man

Season Premiere

2x01 Bin Man

  • 2012-01-29T00:00:00Z1h

London binman Wilbur Ramirez is heading to Jakarta, the vast mega city that is the capital of Indonesia. For ten days Wilbur works with Imam, one of the army of semi-destitute binmen who collect rubbish in one of the biggest and fastest growing cities in the world.

From the health and safety conscious world of British waste management, Wilbur enters a life of squalor and poverty - staying next to a fly-ridden dump and joining Imam's back breaking daily round as he collects the rubbish of Jakarta's wealthy. It's a moving journey as Wilbur discovers the insecurity and danger that dominates Imam's life, and his powerlessness to change his circumstances.

2012-02-05T00:00:00Z

2x02 Fisherman

2x02 Fisherman

  • 2012-02-05T00:00:00Z1h

Cornish fisherman Andy Giles gives up his state of the art trawler to travel to the coast of Sierra Leone, where the fishing is done from a dugout canoe.

Living in a small community of mud huts, Andy discovers a very different way of life where a bad day's fishing means a hungry family. Even this precarious lifestyle is now under threat from foreign trawlers that fish illegally in the villagers' waters, taking their fish, destroying their nets and sometimes even sinking their canoes, with tragic consequences.

Through the international language of the fisherman, Andy develops a lasting friendship with his hosts, in a film which highlights the plight of subsistence fishermen around the world

2012-02-12T00:00:00Z

2x03 Train Driver

2x03 Train Driver

  • 2012-02-12T00:00:00Z1h

Train driver Simon Davies usually drives the high speed Pendolino between London and Manchester, but now he faces a very different challenge as he travels to Peru and one of the highest and steepest railway lines on earth.

Mining is the life blood of Peru and every day trains carry thousands of tons of metal ores down from huge mines in the high Andes. Coached by some of the toughest train drivers in the world, Simon has just days to learn how to handle a massive train down the spectacular and terrifying slopes, risking derailment and death on train lines at an altitude higher than Mont Blanc. He also discovers a community in crisis, where pollution from mining is poisoning the population.

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