Countryfile's Matt Baker shares fears of parents getting older in family admission

Countryfile presenter Matt Baker is back on the road with his parents, Janice and Mike, with another series of Matt Baker: Travels with Mum and Dad. Matt and his family are no strangers to the spotlight, having previously collaborated on Matt Baker's Our Farm in the Dales.

However, in an exclusive chat with Express.co.uk, Matt shared his excitement about working with his parents and discussed some of the challenging decisions they've had to make while filming their shows. He also explained the reason they didn't travel very far was due to his parents' age.

Comparing his new series to his previous TV ventures, Matt explained: "We used to do these little trips away, where we would go and see how our wool was being processed in the wool mills, and so we just basically supersized that concept of these rural days out.

"And the key with it is they're always close to home because obviously, having a farm you can't go far. And plus, with the dad being like 80, the reality of them planning to go on some sort of adventure was never going to be the case."

He continued: "People have loved it, but we're now in our third series where I think the key is that we're not going far. We're not going abroad, and it's actually really relatable, and hopefully, from my generation's perspective, I'm kind of inspiring people to take the older members of their family out, to get these new experiences and to have fun and just to be together and experience stuff that they wouldn't really do themselves."

Turning his attention to his other series, Our Farm in the Dales, Matt didn't shut down the idea of making future episodes.

"There are no plans not to do it," he confessed, adding: "It's the question everybody keeps asking me, 'Are you doing more on the farm?'

"We didn't do it as a TV programme idea, it sort of happened. It was an interesting story of how it actually evolved because I was sort of having meetings with different TV channels with our production company.

"When we started the work [on the farm], we'd actually started doing all of this stuff before we turned the cameras on, and I was having all these meetings, I was doing a Zoom and it was chaos."

He added: "We were all surprised by how successful it was, but I'm really proud of it, and it's something that because although it was about farming, it was also about the difficult things that all families go through."

The TV presenter continued: "And when you get those big decisions, where, for mum, choosing to change direction on the farm and to make decisions in families when you decide to do something different. And, we sort of filmed that process of deciding how to make things easier, going forward, and more sustainable.

"And honestly, the amount of correspondence that I've had from people say, 'it's difficult to have those conversations' but even if you don't live on a farm, it's the same thing, families go through the same thing all the time, and we were doing it to a backdrop on the farm, which made it visual and practical to see those things happening. But actually, the conversations that it started were more important."

Elaborating on why the series came to an end, he said: "So that's why we didn't sort of decide to stop filming it, it's just the end of that process. It was a real, natural, end of that chapter, so that's why we haven't done any more."

Matt Baker: Travels with Mum and Dad returns on Monday at 9pm on More4.