An Idiot Abroad 3 (The Short Way Round) is three-episode travel documentary. The program, produced by Ricky Gervais as a 2012 Christmas special for BBC Sky-1, features Karl Pilkington and Warwick Davis. Gervais regards these three shows (each about 45 minutes long) as the best of his An Idiot Abroad TV shows -- first 13 part series aired in 2010; the second 13 shows were broadcast in 2011. The titular "idiot" is Karl Pilkington, a hapless everyman that Gervais calls a "bald-headed Manc twonk" -- "Manc" means a person from Manchester. Pilkington is stodgy and conventional, an outspoken British plebe who doesn't much like foreigners or foreign countries, has a variety of phobias, and a weak stomach to boot. The premise of the show is that Gervais (and Steve Merchant in the first two series) dispatch Pilkington to various destinations and, then, torment him by requiring that he engage in "adventure" travel activities -- mountaineering, bungee-jumping, etc. Pilkington doesn't conceal his chagrin and doesn't even pretend to be a good sport. From time to time, Gervais calls him on the cell-phone and denounces his presenter-protagonist as a coward or xenophobe -- this is comically ironic, because Gervais never ventures beyond his London mansion. Pilkington plays his role as a sort of idiot savant -- he mutters to himself continuously, gets into altercations with his camera and sound crew, and, generally, makes witty and, even, profound comments about his adventures. The show implicitly endorses the notion that the pusillanimous and close-minded Pilkington, as a representative Briton, is wiser and has more sound opinions than his smart-ass tormentor, Ricky Gervais.
In the three-show 2012 Christmas series, Gervais gives Pilkington a sidekick, Warwick Davis. Davis is outrageously self-confident and handsome with chiseled movie-star features and beautiful teeth and he speaks in a deep euphonious baritone. He is also a Spondyloepiphyseal dysplastic dwarf, about three feet tall. By contrast, the Pilkington is scrawny, slope-shouldered, developing a bit of a paunch -- he has a bald head ringed with a few strands of whiskery hair and a perpetual bemused scowl on his face. Davis and Pilkington, side by side, are a gag in themselves, the ultimate odd couple, a sort of Laurel and Hardy team. Pilkington seems generally fit although he is always "whinging". By contrast, poor Davis has to support his massive torso on tiny hips and stubby baby-doll legs -- to see him walk is to experience discomfort: he has to waddle with a strange robotic gait that looks agonizing. But Davis is a movie star with many credits to his name, chipper to a fault, and, seemingly, indefatigable. The three Christmas shows ostensibly follow the travels of Marco Polo, beginning in Venice, passing through India and, then, ending in China -- in fact, the series loops to a satisfying conclusion in Macao where Davis and Pilkington are ferried about a faux-Venetian lagoon by Chinese gondoliers singing in Italian. (They are staying a gambling hell associated with the Las Vegas "Venetian" franchise.) The show is continuously interesting and very funny. It is, also, I think one of the best travel shows ever produced.
Most travel shows of the PBS variety feature either dangerous expeditions (climbing K2 or trekking Antarctica) or comfortable sightseeing of the Rick Steves' sort. An Idiot Abroad is the anti-Rick Steves. In his shows, the avuncular, somewhat effete Steves advocates "travel through the back door" -- that is, getting to know the colorful locals while, at the same time, enjoying the standard tourist attractions in their countries. Pilkington, by contrast, wants little or nothing to do with most of the locals, derides their colorful customs, and despises their food -- in fact, he evinces publicly the attitudes that most of us intrinsically experience when we travel abroad. Stevens suggests that foreign travel can be relaxing, even, comfortable. For Pilkington, travel abroad is a cacophonous nightmare of sleeplessness, diarrhea and nausea, combined with horrific cramped and malodorous lodgings. Of course, Pilkington's experiences are much more realistic as far as the actual experience of foreign travel -- you stagger around some picturesque place sleep-deprived, fearing the local banditry, and always looking for toilet facilities. The brilliance of An Idiot Abroad is that Pilkington doesn't always completely despise the places that he travels and that, in fact, he begrudgingly admits to liking certain countries -- the episode about travel in an anarchic Mexico is a strangely touching example of Pilkington finding a place oddly congenial. Pilkington is our surrogate -- the things he finds disgusting are probably things you and I would find equally dismaying, although we would likely hold our tongue until we returned to the comforts of home. Because it is more concentrated, and more cruel, the Christmas special is excellent, moving without being sentimental, extremely funny, and thought-provoking. After a relatively mild couple of days in Venice, Pilkington and Davis travel to Macedonia. Told to attend a Sufi religious ritual, the two men are horrified to see their cheerful devout dervish hosts sticking huge spikes through their cheeks and lower jaws. (Davis gets nauseated and throws up). The travelers spend the night with some Romany, gypsies who seem realistically alien, impoverished, and squalid -- they keep sneaking rubs to Davis' head, apparently for good luck. The show ups the ante with some extraordinary sequences in India, a country that Pilkington hates for gastro-intestinal reasons. The two men perform at an incredibly dilapidated circus, developing one of the show's central themes -- we go to foreign countries to gawk at the locals; but, of course, they are gawking back at us in horror, particularly with respect to this bizarre odd couple. They watch corpses being burnt in an Indian holy city on the Ganges and, then, camp out by the river. (Unfortunately, some disreputable-looking Indian holy men, completely drunk, assault them, shrieking imprecations like "I'm no fucking snake-charmer.") Things reach a cringe-inducing level of horror when Pilkington goes to see conjoined twins, the so-called "Spider Sisters." The two young women share a common belly and torso and have a single pair of legs protruding from the side of their body; they ambulate on their hands and using their two strangely bent legs, moving slowly across the ground like a crab. Pilkington wants to interview the women (and, in fact, does): Davis is obviously appalled and refuses to enter the side-show. Ultimately, Pilkington persuades him to join the girls on the stage where they comb his hair -- it is, of course, a freak show and the very thing that Davis has spent his life trying to avoid. Apparently, the show is unscripted and the scenes in the miserable side-show have an alarming squalor -- Davis is palpably disturbed. In the last episode, the two men climb a sacred mountain in China. To reach the top, They must ascend several thousand steps. Of course, this is brutally painful to Davis who, nonetheless, struggle to climb the mountain. (The two men ascend the endless series of steps with a couple of porters who have a sedan to carry Davis if he finds it impossible to keep climbing.) Davis weakens and can't continue. Pilkington savagely berates him and Davis starts weeping -- it doesn't appear to me that any of this is "acting" in any conventional sense. Ultimately, the two get to the summit where Pilkington takes credit for Davis' courage claiming that he "motivated" him "like Winston Churchill." The scenes in Macao are something of an anti-climax after the drama on the Chinese mountain but, also, appealing in their own way.
This series is available on Netflix and I can't recommend it highly enough.
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