The grumpy Welsh proletarian is about to roll up his sleeves once again in a bid to reconnect with the working class people of the UK in Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience Series 6. Following up on an impressive five past outings of the show he’ll be trying out a new batch of careers in his bid to use the whole experience as a means of staying out of the 9 to 5 rat race of a steady job than with any intention of taking any of them seriously.
Air date
The new series will be coming to BBC 1 Wales with an air date for the first episode on Tuesday the 16th February 2016 at the latish hour of 10:40pm, so maybe Rhod’s going to be effing and jeffing like a fisherman’s wife, although we’ve never really understood that phrase. The remaining episodes will air weekly from then at the same batty time.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t live in the fair kingdom of Wales because, because it’ll also be available on BBC iPlayer, although most freeview TV or satellite systems should be able to pick up BBC 1 Wales anyway.
Episodes
Series 6 will follow the format of the previous instalments of Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience with four episodes in total with each one forcing the comedian to turn his inexperienced hands to a new profession. The first will see him taking on the challenge of being a journalist for a couple of days, so while tapping Steve Coogan’s phone line and approaching the local constabulary with a healthy bonus is probably off the cards now, he will be sent on a special assignment to a car park in Lampeter for Wales’ oldest newspaper, the Camarthen Journal.
He’ll also need to try a little role playing to simulate journalist interview conditions in a war zone, as well as getting to grips with how an evening news story is worked on for BBC Wales Today and getting to shadow presenter Nick Palit. If that isn’t enough heavyweight journalistic experience for him, he’ll be given another field assignment to record his own news report to go out on the show.
The remaining episodes will serve up an equal amount of insight, hilarity and personal humiliation for Rhod as he will subsequently be interning as a paranormal investigator, coach for a rugby team and in one of Wales’ last remaining mines. Hopefully, there will be plenty more series to come, so maybe the pole dancer, Storm Trooper, bomb disposal specialist pipe dream will still have a chance of becoming a reality.
Production
Series 6 of the show has once again been produced by the breakout Risca-based Welsh startup, Zipline Creative, who launched the show back in 2010. They’ve made an new series every year since and with the popularity of the show, hopefully there will be a fair few still to come, not least of all for our suggested episodes above to see the light of day.
First impressions
We’re big fans of Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience, despite the fact that he’s got a face like a slapped Arsenal fan with a bad hangover most of the time. If anything that only adds to the value of the show as we get to see his sallow chops going through either a series of humiliating or difficult challenges, which is a lot of fun. Even when he’s got some down time just standing around eating a pie with Greg Davies at the Green Man Festival – dropping splodges of it down his t-shirt – he doesn’t look happy about it, which makes it all the more comical, so making him do more challenging escapades is hilarious.
