An Idiot Abroad
2010
Original language: English
- comedy
- documentary
The story
An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary television series broadcast on Sky1 and Science, as well as spin-off books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they stay in the United Kingdom and monitor his progress.
What it’s like
Bright, flat daylight and handheld travel footage that looks like a holiday snapshot gone slightly wrong, cut with static talking-head interviews where Karl Pilkington sits against a plain backdrop, deadpan and unimpressed. The mood is dry, mildly exasperated comedy with a warm undercurrent of affection, the kind of thing to put on for an easy evening or a lazy weekend when you want to laugh without concentrating. Each episode moves at a brisk, chatty clip, with the pleasure coming from awkward conversations, mismatched expectations and Pilkington's blunt reactions to famous landmarks and local customs, while the voiceover from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, heard mostly off-screen, keeps poking at him from the UK. The arc is simply a grumpy, reluctant man being dragged around the world and grudgingly, sometimes surprisingly, giving a little ground. Gentle throughout: the humour is verbal and social, with no violence, no sexual content and no real peril beyond the occasional rough hotel or ropey transport. It suits people who want good-natured, rough-edged travel comedy and an easy laugh that never asks much of them.
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