My Family's Crazy Gap Year

Season 1

Gary Fisher always thought there must be more to life than a car in the garage and a mortgage round his neck, and now he plans to find out. Gary wants to see if it's possible for a welder from Warrington to take on the middle class dream and buy an ocean-going yacht and sail his wife and twin toddlers to America. But the only way he can afford his dream is to do all the restoration work on the boat himself. Over two gruelling years he spends every penny, and every spare minute of his time attempting to get the boat on the water. But as the yacht nears completion his marriage falls apart. This film charts the emotional journey of a man whose desire to build a better life for his family risks losing them entirely.

When John Tregembo hit 50 he began to change everything in his life. He gave up his job to become an artist, then he sold the family house and, now, he's taking his wife and two teenage kids on a search to the other side of the world to find a new home. But the family have only been abroad once before, and they struggle to adapt to life off the tourist trail in Japan and Cambodia. John sets his hopes on Australia. But their road trip across the Outback ends up threatening his whole family's future.

Nikki McClements takes her nine-year-old daughter Beth around the world. Little does she know how dramatically the trip will affect the course of her life. Single mum Nikki McClements is on a mission to show her nine-year-old daughter Beth how the world's poor live. Nikki had to hold down three jobs in order to save the £10,000 needed to fund the trip. Nikki has also left behind her boyfriend, who she's promised to marry on her return. In the meantime however their epic journey takes them from their home in Devon to volunteer in poor communities across three continents. But how will a nine-year-old used to all the comforts of British life cope working in a South African orphanage? Or with subsistence living in a remote Thai village?

Rosanna and Ajay Pindoria pack their three young kids into the back of a 4x4 and head off to spend a year driving the length of Africa. The family take the back roads of Africa, all the way from Cape Town to Cairo, dreaming of an epic journey through some of the most dangerous and inhospitable places on earth. But an adult's dream can be a child's nightmare, and the expedition proves to be both overambitious and underprepared, as a holiday of a lifetime nearly ends up costing them their lives.

All his life, yachting fanatic Jason Lawrence has dreamed of sailing around the world. Now he's decided it's time to fulfil his ambition, and he's taking his wife and two young children. This episode follows the Lawrences on their formidable maritime quest as they set out to cross the world's largest oceans on a mammoth journey from England to Australia. Battling through heavy seas it's not just their boat that's nearly pushed to breaking point. Isolated for months at a stretch with his wife and children, Jason Lawrence is forced to confront what it really means to be a father.

Cocooned by wealth and private schooling, John Willmott, 55, and his three children - Cyrus (12), Emile (nine) and Eliane (six) - have lived a charmed existence. But now mum Rafia, 33, wants to burst their privileged bubble, hoping the whole family will learn some valuable lessons. In the Himalayas, the Mongolian steppes and deep in the Papuan rainforest, she seeks out places and people untouched by the modern world. Theirs is an epic journey that includes encounters with the Dalai Lama and one of the world's remotest tribes, but will it make a lasting impact on their lives?