Daniel and Majella pack their bags for UTV Ireland

What the future looks like for UTV Ireland under the ownership of ITV won’t be fully clear until the sale of UTV Media’s television assets to the British media group goes through. In the meantime, the occasional locally produced programme continues to pop up on its schedule.

Daniel and Majella's B&B Road Trip makes its debut next Monday at 8pm, when it will be sandwiched between what are invariably the channel's most-viewed programmes, the two Monday instalments of Coronation Street.

The six-part series, made for UTV Ireland by Vision Independent Productions and sponsored by Skoda, has been dubbed a “reality travel show with a difference”.

In the first episode, Majella drives Daniel to Tulsk, Co Roscommon, followed by a trip to Cloonacool, Co Sligo, with locals in the latter town kindly providing UTV Ireland with one of the strangest and funniest sequences imaginable.

After plans to make the show were publicised earlier this year, the makers were apparently inundated with requests from B&B owners to feature on it.

UTV Ireland says the show will allow viewers to see singer Daniel O'Donnell and wife Majella "as we have never seen them before" – though in Daniel's case, it may have been beaten to the punch on that score by the producers of Strictly Come Dancing.