Funny franchise lands in Greece
Coogan and Brydon follow Homer (sort of) on jaunt
“All you can do is do something that’s already been done but do it better or do it differently.” That’s Rob Brydon talking to Steve Coogan in The Trip, Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 road movie comedy in which the two British funnymen drive through their country’s Lake District, sampling fine cuisine and even finer scenery.
Since then, they’ve done their best to make good on that philosophy. In 2014, they took The Trip to Italy. In 2017, it was The Trip to Spain. And now The Trip to Greece, which everyone swears will be the last. We’ll see. Like a satisfying meal, you may walk away unable to eat another bite, but you will get hungry again.
Brydon and Coogan play embellished versions of themselves, which means Coogan is a little more erudite, full of himself and of fascinating facts about the regions they’re visiting, while Brydon is lighter, more ready with a pun or a celebrity impersonation. So when conversation turns to Coogan’s role in Stan & Ollie, Brydon immediately wonders what Stan Laurel and Tom Hardy would sound like, with predictably amusing results.
Brydon is a consummate mimic, slipping easily into the voice of Marlon Brando, Ray Winstone, Dustin Hoffman or Robert De Niro — but not Michael Caine?! — with Coogan doing his best to keep up. That kind of mild macho posturing drives much of the plot, as when Coogan challenges his friend to a swimming race, or quizzes him about the historical significance of the first marathon. Or when he claims to
be getting better looking as he grows older, to which Brydon readily agrees: “You were unpalatable as a young man.”
In many ways, this Trip is much like the others, which is not a criticism: If you love one, you’ll love them all! Coogan has troubled dreams, while Brydon seems more at ease with his life, and their funny, rambling conversations are regularly interrupted by aerial shots of gorgeous Greek scenery, or dishes being lovingly cooked and assembled in the restaurants they visit.
The geographic arc this time is that the friends are retracing the steps of Odysseus from Homer’s epic, though perhaps that comes across more clearly in the six episodes and three hours The Trip to Greece runs on British television. Here, a few steps seem to have been lost in the process.
Of course, the joy for viewers is in the familiarity of the travellers, not to mention the escapist nature of their journey. And I don’t mean that they have a nice rental car and slip into restaurants with ocean views, where a good meal will set you back several hundred euros. I mean that they get to leave home at all, cross a border or two and dine out with a good friend who is not a quarantine companion. We should all be so lucky.