You Should be Watching: Travel Shows

Travel shows allow me to combine two of my great loves: experiencing new places and cultures and sitting on my butt. But as someone who is fairly well-travelled, I ask a lot of travel shows. I want to come away from them with much the same feelings as I bring back from trips: a good sense of the destination, a few funny anecdotes, and, most importantly, a sense of camaraderie with my travelling companion(s), embodied here by the show hosts. Anyone can tell you that a trip is made or broken by the person you are travelling with, and, similarly, the likeability of the hosts is the most crucial aspect of any travel show. Here are a few travel shows I've seen, good and not-so good:

Long Way Round/Long Way Down/Race to Dakar

Tone: Travelling with the Stars

I've already written about this show once, so I won't go on about it too long, except to say that any travel show with a unique angle (in this case it's two celebrities travelling by motorbike through rough terrain) has an advantage. In most shows you won't get moments like in Long Way Down when the guys visit the filming site of the original Star Wars in Tunisia. At first Ewan McGregor worries that he will be mobbed by fans who recognize him from the newer films, but when no one approaches him he (clearly disappointed) stands next to a poster of himself smiling and nodding at people, who continue to ignore him as Charley laughs and jeers nearby. If you're a fan of British celebs, travel, motorbikes, or any combination thereof, this one is for you!

World Travels

Tone: Like reading travel journalism . . . aloud

Much like I enjoy watching travel, I also enjoy reading about travel. I particularly enjoy the articles of Robin Esrock (often featured in Globe Travel) and Julia Dimon (Metro), who are both great at capturing the personal stories of the local people, as well as the feel of the destinations. Together they host World Travels, which seeks to portray the experience of being a travel writer, as the hosts write articles about the places they are visiting on the show. This side of the show can be interesting as we see them facing down deadlines and struggling to capture photos and quotes. But the show also features Esrock and Dimon reading excerpts of the articles in voiceover as we look at scenery. The pace of the show grinds to a halt whenever this happens, and it kills the charm of the unscripted moments we see. This show would be better if it abandoned this trope.

Departures

Tone: Around the world with your best friends

This show is hands down my favourite. Though it's off the air now, OLN frequently re-runs the show's three seasons, as they seem to realize that it is by far their best program. Following two lifelong friends Scott and Justin (as well as their camera man André) as they travel around the world for one year (and then twice more after the first season), this show is brilliant for realizing that the personalities of the hosts are perhaps even more important than the destinations. While the guys do address the camera and take care to portray the interesting aspects of the sites they visit, they also spend a lot of time just joking around together and enjoying those random moments of travel that make trips memorable. My favourite example of this randomness occurring when they are lost in the Tokyo subway system, and Scott presses the "assistance" button on a map. The map is suddenly pulled backwards, and a man pops out of a hidden panel in the wall to help as the guys stare in disbelief. In addition, the amazing cinematography has won several well-deserved awards. I cannot believe that one man with one camera captures such amazing shots!

Destination Truth

Tone: Ghost Hunters goes global

Destination Truth follows a team of "paranormal investigators" as they travel around the world seeking out ghosts, sea monsters, werewolves, and other supernatural beasties. The team employs the same dubious technology (EMF readers, etc) as most supernatural phenomena shows, but the travel show aspect makes it unique. I am of two minds about this show. The first part of every episode gives background on local legends (the chupacabra in Chile, Ogopogo in British Columbia, King Tut's curse, etc.) giving information on history, local culture, and other interesting tidbits. The team then heads to the site, doing a bit of touring around and exhibiting a fun camaraderie. I genuinely enjoy this part of the show. But then I tune out entirely as soon as that damn green night vision kicks in, and it becomes just like all other ghost hunting shows: a lot of people whispering, "Did you hear that?!" "Yeah, I definitely heard that!!" while we in the audience hear nothing. If you like supernatural reality shows and travel, you will love this. If you just like travel shows, you might want to change the channel after the first 30 minutes.

Which Way To . . .

Tone: Those obnoxious people you're stuck behind in line at the airport

During my travels I've come across many other tourists I couldn't stand, and, unfortunately, several of them were other Canadians. Particularly annoying are those tourists who make a point of bragging that they are experiencing "the real [destination], not like the tourists do" or that they are going to out-of-the-way local haunts, "away from all the tourists." Guess what? Do you live in the place where you are visiting? No? THEN YOU ARE A TOURIST! See your destination in whatever way you like, but please don't get all self-righteous, thinking that you are somehow better than all other visitors. Which Way To is like being stuck in a tour group with people like that. It follows the three Eagar brothers from Cape Breton as they travel the world in what they insufferably refer to as "Eagar Brothers style." This "style" seems to basically mean straying away from the major attractions and having a few conversations with locals. The boys pat themselves on the back so hard for these incredible feats that it's amazing they don't injure themselves. They are impossible to watch without yelling at and should be avoided at all costs.

An Idiot Abroad

Tone: The title says it all

I cannot recommend The Ricky Gervais Show enough. The show is an animated representation of the conversations Ricky, Stephen Merchant, and their friend Karl Pilkington have for their weekly radio shows. These hilarious segments created a star out of Pilkington for his bizarre, often childlike, way of seeing the world (do yourselves a favour and click that link). An idiot abroad is a different sort of travel show, as Gervais explicitly states, "I want him to hate it for my own amusement!" Pilkington, you see, is the type of person who would much rather sit on his couch with a packet of crisps than tour the world and sees mainly hassle and inconvenience everywhere he goes. This attitude is doubly amusing for the viewer: we can laugh along with Karl and the unpleasant aspects of travel that most shows don't depict (it is gross how everyone spits in China!), but we can also laugh at him for being more closed-minded and huffy than most of us would be at getting to see the amazing sights of the world. For example, Karl had ambivalent feelings on the museum of Cairo: "It's like my Auntie Nora's house - too many ornaments!" A fun show for sure, if you're not too concerned about actually learning anything about the destinations.

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