Final season of Parts Unknown airing this fall
Anthony Bourdain’s culinary travel series “Parts Unknown” will have a final season premièring in the fall, a spokesperson for CNN confirmed Wednesday. The new season will feature seven episodes and an exact air date has yet to be announced.
Episode details for the remaining six are not yet available but CNN reports that only one episode had been finished before Bourdain’s death in June.
Bourdain’s friend, chef Eric Ripert, found the 61-year-old celebrity chef-turned-journalist unresponsive in his hotel room in eastern France. Christian de Rocquigny, the local prosecutor handling the case, told The New York Times and People that suicide was the cause of death.
In the completed episode, Bourdain reportedly visits Kenya with his fellow CNN colleague W. Kamau Bell, who hosts “United Shades of America.”
Four additional episodes filmed in Spain, Indonesia, Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Big Bend area near the Texas-Mexico border will be completed with help from the directors who shot the projects. They will feature Bourdain’s voice, though not his trademark voice-overs, according to the news outlet.
“Each one will feel slightly different depending on what’s gathered in the field,” CNN EVP Amy Entelis told the LA Times. “They will have the full presence of Tony because you’ll see him, you’ll hear him, you’ll watch him. That layer of his narration will be missing, but it will be replaced by other voices of people who are in the episodes.”
According to the story, the penultimate episode will feature a conversation with the cast and crew, as well as outtakes and behind-the-scenes moments.
In one of his final interviews, Bourdain explained that he focused more on taking risks than pleasing the audience. It paid off in numerous Emmy nominations and wins. (A month after his death, the Television Academy announced that he had earned two more nods and six for “Parts Unknown” overall.)
Bourdain fans can look forward to a biography set to publish in fall 2019. “Bourdain: The Oral Biography,” will be edited by the chef ’s longtime collaborator Laurie Woolever, who co-authored “Appetites: A Cookbook” with Bourdain in 2016.