Let’s call time on famous actors making travel shows, unless it’s Stanley Tucci
Europe may be overrun with influencers and Japan so overstuffed with tourists that sushi chefs are cracking, but travel TV has become ground zero for underemployed actors.
Whether they’re on planes, trains or automobiles, they’re everywhere: Martin Clunes: Islands of America/Australia/the Pacific; Miriam Margolyes’ Almost Australian/Australia Unmasked; Travel Man with either Joe Lycett or Richard Ayoade; Tony Robinson (too many to name); train travel (insert your favourite clapped out actor or politician here); Joanna Lumley in Russia/Japan/India etc; Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy; Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico; Eugene Levy’s The Reluctant Traveller and Conan O’Brien Must Go.
In Conan O’Brien Must Go, the US talkshow host drops in on foreign fans, but it’s really just an excuse to get dressed up as a viking or tango in Argentina.Credit: Binge
Each of the shows falls into loose categories: travel for travel (a novel idea, I know), travel for comedy, and travel for food. I’m not including the gazillion travel cooking shows hosted by chefs, as they are an entire subset of their own that usually involve sweating, nudity and spices (or all three at once).
The travel for travel crew are the most earnest. Watching a ruddy-faced Martin Clunes giggle with joy at seeing a little penguin in Tasmania is delightful, but it also makes me wonder: doesn’t he have anything better to do? Surely, there’s an episode of Midsomer Murders waiting for him at home? Joanna Lumley gets a pass because she has a terrific jolly hockey sticks attitude, with genuine curiosity about the world.
The travel for comedy crew (Lycett/Ayoade/O’Brien/Levy), meanwhile, gambol their way through the trip, with a guaranteed set up with wacky locals and even wackier food. The point is not the travel, it’s the gags collected along the way. Ayoade was a master of this, with the first nine seasons of Travel Man, but Levy whinging through Europe is tiresome at best. We get it, you don’t like it! Maybe stay at home. In Conan O’Brien Must Go (Binge), one of the most recent additions to the genre, the US comedian drops in on his foreign fans, but it’s really just an excuse to get dressed up as a viking or tango in Argentina. Ever the master of self-deprecation, O’Brien’s intro sums it up best: “He scavenges in distant lands uninvited, fuelled by a bottomless hunger for recognition, and the occasional selfie.”
The travel for food crew are the standouts, with Tucci leading the pack. He’s elegant and erudite. Effortlessly conversing in Italian – he’s Italian on both sides, don’t you know – and enhancing the experience for everyone. He finds joy in pizza, pasta, wild rabbits and offal. Whatever the locals are cooking, he’s eating, often in a pair of slim-fit chinos and black skivvy that belie the amount of carbs he’s consuming.
Critically, it doesn’t feel like he’s taking the mickey, as he takes the country he is in seriously and respects its culture. Perhaps it’s because he’s Italian on both sides – did he mention that? – but also because it’s a country he has worked and holidayed in for decades. He has personal relationships with many of those featured in Searching for Italy (SBS On Demand), which makes for genuine and warm interactions. There is no sense a producer is hiding off camera, prodding him with a long stick to interact with the locals. He may be an actor – did he mention he was in Big Night with Isabella Rossellini? – but he’s not making any of this up.
Locally, we’re good at making destination TV (Deadloch did wonders for Tasmania), but not so great at sending our own on wild, pointless adventures. Our travel shows mostly have the air of a school excursion: worthy and a bit dull, depending on who the teacher is. National treasure Julia Zemiro is an excellent headmistress, having tripped around the east coast with SBS’s Great Australian Walks. She effortlessly mixed the personal and the political with wit, charm and lashings of curiosity.
Heather Ewart is a fine host of the ABC’s Back Roads (iview) but she is a journalist, so it’s less of a lark and more of a well-researched school report. Same goes for the ABC’s “factual lifestyle series” Back to Nature, which saw award-winning actor Aaron Pedersen and bestselling author Holly Ringland carrying backpacks and exploring various bush landscapes across the country. It was quiet, it was worthy, it was so very, very boring.
La dolce vita: A scene from season one of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.Credit: SBS
Where are our celebrities? And I’m not talking about the ones in an artificial camp in the African jungle or those racing around the world, I want Russell Crowe in a clapped out Datsun driving to Broken Hill with a camera crew in tow. Someone give the man a job and hand me the executive producing credit and Logie right now. Or put Cate Blanchett on the rails and see what she makes of the 14-hour XPT trip between Sydney and Brisbane with no Wi-Fi and a dining car best avoided. When I once interviewed Julia Zemiro she said she’d love to do a European travel show with Judith Lucy. Yes, please!
It used to be said of the US troops in Britain during WWII that they were overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here. Same goes for most celebrities on the tourist trail, except they’re underemployed, overpaid and over here. Don’t we want more from our travel shows? A sense of adventure and whimsy, not just the sense that the host once appeared on East Enders and is now topping up their superannuation.
It’s time to shut our borders to gallivanting, under-employed actors (Miriam Margolyes gets a pass because she’s an Australian citizen). No more quokkas need to be hugged in the name of resurrecting some foreigner’s career. Unless it’s Stanley Tucci, he’s welcome any time.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.