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The Trip To Spain is the third in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon‘s occasional but engaging series as they find a reason to traverse the countryside to sample top eateries. We’ve had English restaurants, Italian restaurants, and now – in the third series which sees it moving to Sky Atlantic from BBC2 – Spanish ones. At the time of posting this, I’ve only seen episodes one and two of the new six-episode series where they partake of the delights of the TXOKO Getaria and the Extebarri.
Coogan and Brydon play exaggerated versions of themselves, we’re told, so the latter got to have an extra-marital affair in series 2, which led to people asking his real-life wife if she knew what he was up to when he was away.
As always, there’s quips aplenty, such as when Steve calls Rob to introduce the idea of a third trip to him, citing a new TV series which is linking in with it, and concludes: “My people will be in touch… with………………………. you.”
There’s also chat about Coogan’s film, Philomena, the real life tale of the lady looking for her son, with its star talking about writing another where someone’s looking for their daughter (“a sister piece”). But for a trilogy, who or what else could they look for? Rob suggests a car.
- Steve: “It’s bigger than that”.
Rob: “A van?”
and they humourously talk about how they would kill each other!
Impressions are also in good supply, such as Rob’s (usually the best of the pairing) Alan Bennett and Anthony Hopkins, while they both have a stab at Mick Jagger…
The Trip To Spain is more pleasant entertainment, although when eating, I wish they wouldn’t keep sticking their fingers in their mouths – Bleah!!! Use a toothpick!!!
As an aside, I once visited The Inn At Whitewell and it was very nice, albeit expensive. We sat in the same room they did, albeit at a different table, but I could see from that episode that the room has two entrances and that they’d closed one off, and clearly used the rest of the room to set up the camera crew. We were going to try others, but they were either too far or even more crazily-priced… and who needs a tasting menu??
May 9th update: With two episodes left to air in The Trip To Spain, I won’t give spoilers, but I will say it has a very odd ending, especially since it felt like it had ‘ended’ about 10 minutes before the running time was complete, but came back for a bit more.
Also, as time went on, I felt this series was rather treading water a bit, revisiting the same old impressions we’ve heard before, so overall, it drops to a 7/10.
The first and second series of The Trip are available on both DVD and Blu-ray, but sadly, the latter are only ‘movie versions’, of around 105 minutes apiece, so losing almost 50% of the original running time. Why? I’d love a full HD version of all the series in full!
The Trip To Spain begins at 10pm tonight on Sky Atlantic and isn’t uet available to pre-order, but you can buy Series 1 on Blu-ray and DVD, and Series 2 on Blu-ray and DVD.
Episodes 1 & 2 Score: 8/10
Series overall: 7/10
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Producers: Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter
Screenplay: Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan
Cast:
Steve: Steve Coogan
Rob: Rob Brydon
Chloe: Tessa Walker
Aurore: Aurore Delion
Steve’s UK Agent: Justin Edwards
Steve’s US Agent: Kyle Soller
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.