Armchair travel
You can venture around the globe and discover new places this winter without leaving the comforts of home, thanks to these 10 travel shows airing on Netflix.
If you’d rather put your feet up in your living room than put your arms up during an airport security pat-down, Netflix makes an attractive option for the armchair traveller in all of us.
Whether you’re researching your next big excursion or simply want to live vicariously through those who are living out their epic travel dreams, here are the best ways to navigate the options on Netflix to uncover the best travel shows and documentaries now screening in your living room.
You’ll actually want to take your shoes off for this.
1 ANTHONY BOURDAIN: PARTS UNKNOWN
Long regarded as the travel show against which all other travel shows are judged, Anthony Bourdain changed the game in food-focused television the minute his award-winning show debuted in 2013. No one could uncover the soul of a place and its people quite like the legendary former chef and author.
With effortless cool and always respectful curiosity, Bourdain uses food as a window from which to open up discovery of a place and its people from all walks of life across all corners of the globe.
With the final episode of his masterwork Parts Unknown having recently aired on CNN, Seasons 7-10 are currently available on Netflix.
Tune in to see Bourdain dining with Barack Obama in Hanoi, exploring Montana with Jim Harrison, and visiting Puerto Rico five months before Hurricane Maria.
2 STEPHEN FRY IN AMERICA
Laced with loads of British witticism and heaps of transcontinental charm, Stephen Fry in America follows renowned English comic/ actor Stephen Fry on his journey as he travels to all 50 U.S. states in the span of six onehour episodes.
Part fish-out-of-water story and part exploration of what his life might have been (Fry almost grew up in the U.S.), the series (which aired on BBC in 2008) depicts Fry road-tripping the U.S. in his trademark black London cab from New England to Hawaii.
Along the way, he breaks bread with Navajos in Monument Valley, speaks with the homeless in St. Louis, and attends a college football game in Alabama among a diverse smattering of all-American adventures and offbeat excursions. Sometimes the best way to see a place is through the eyes of a foreigner.
3 SOMEBODY FEED PHIL
“I’m exactly like Anthony Bourdain if he was afraid of everything,” Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal says he told Netflix when pitching his new food-travel series, Somebody Feed Phil.
Indeed, Rosenthal proves the anti-Bourdain in this nerdy but lovable travelogue full of dorky outfits and flaccid dad jokes that plays out in low-impact fashion over two six-episode seasons.
Exploring more wellknown locales like Venice and New Orleans sprinkled in with a few more eccentric offerings like Cape Town and Tel Aviv, Rosenthal’s show lacks the sharp point of view or journalistic insights of Parts Unknown but makes up for it with an infectious optimism and earnest desire for human connection.
The show’s cheesy theme song declares Phil “a happy and hungry man,” and maybe that’s exactly what the world needs right now.
4 DEPARTURES
What happens when two Canadian dudes decide to drop everything and travel the world for a year? The end result is Departures, which originally aired from 2008-10 and appears on Netflix for 42 episodes over three seasons.
Focused on adventure to faraway lands like the Cook Islands, Mongolia and North Korea, Departures seeks to serve as an inspiring kick in the ass for twenty-somethings everywhere who dream of taking a year off to travel but never pull the trigger.
While mostly an affable exploration of scenic locales and obscure local cultures, the show does have its deeper moments as it explores topics like dealing with isolation on the hyper remote Ascension Island or summoning the courage to publicly kickbox an opponent in a Thai kickboxing ring. Bottom line? If these guys can do it, so can you.
5 JACK WHITEHALL: TRAVELS WITH MY FATHER
In a classic odd couple pairing, 30-year-old British comic Jack Whitehall and his prim-and-proper 78-year-old father tour Southeast Asia and eastern Europe over the course of two seasons in this Netflix original series. Taking advantage of a “gap year” for Season 1, they tour Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, with the fun-loving Jack eager to partake in playful activities like parkour while his father Michael is always lusting after fancier accommodations than the ones Jack books.
They both seek to deepen their relationship through travel and teach each other things along the way, with Jack getting his father to loosen up at times (they even get matching tattoos at one point) and Michael teaching Jack that “there’s more to life than telling jokes about his penis.”
The recently released second season has them touring offbeat eastern Europe locales such as Transylvania, Romania and the Chernobyl site in Ukraine.
6 DARK TOURIST
If your vacation itinerary involves trips to creepy abandoned cities and barren nuclear testing grounds, new Netflix series Dark Tourist may be your (clearly sugar-free) cup of tea.
New Zealand journalist David Farrier explores the budding enterprise of “dark tourism” in this wholly unique eight-episode docu-series, which has him touring the sites of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murders in Milwaukee, hanging out with death cults in Mexico City, and exploring the slums of South Africa among other anti-bucket list activities.
Proving that travel isn’t all eating pasta in Italy and taking photos of the Eiffel Tower, this show is a must for fans of the macabre.
7 ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Rather than focusing on the cute critters and dancing penguins of Happy Feet or Ice Age, this 2007 documentary from world-renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog shows what life is really like for the people who live and work in Antarctica.
The film profiles scientists and maintenance workers living in McMurdo Station, the continent’s largest settlement and a working science centre, to find out why they live here while showcasing their humanity in scenes like a local gathering for a rooftop guitar concert.
Encounters also features encounters with lesser-known features of the landscape such as Mount Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano, paired with Herzog’s narration voice-over that feels strangely at home in this inhospitable climate.
With inspirational quotes from maintenance workers and massive helium balloon launches, you’ve never seen Antarctica like this.
8 TALES BY LIGHT
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this Australian docu-series might end up being longer than the Bible.
Through the course of two six-episode seasons on Netflix, this National Geographic series (produced in collaboration with Canon) depicts the journeys of acclaimed photographers as they travel to remote destinations to tell the story behind the image.
While providing imagery that could help save endangered species and cultures from Utah to Ethiopia, the series takes the viewer along for the ride as photographers chronicle ancient death rituals in India and Indigenous clans in Papua New Guinea in between efforts to photograph elusive snow leopards in the Himalayas and humanfriendly sharks in Bahamas.
With different experts in the fields of nature photography, adventure sports photography and even underwater photography often rotating between episodes, this show will put your Instagram travel selfies to shame.
9 UNDER AN ARCTIC SKY
Ever dream of surfing in Iceland? This 40-minute 2017 documentary Under an Arctic Sky depicts all of the efforts, doubts and ultimate triumphs that went into turning that vivid dream into a reality as one of the worst storms in decades threatens to derail the whole enterprise.
In the film, six surfers travel to the remote north coast of Iceland to capture the ultimate moment: to surf in the middle of the night in front of a snow-covered mountain illuminated by the moon and the glowering Northern Lights.
Along the way, they battle trips to the hospital, cars buried in snow, cameras frozen in ice, and other frustrations as they are forced to improvise on the fly with the ever-present prospect of failure always looming.
Employing high-tech cameras, drone footage, timelapse photography, and Kickstarter crowdfunding, the film demonstrates what can happen when you truly challenge yourself to venture deep into the unknown.
10 THE MOANING OF LIFE
Grumpy, bald and occasionally anti-social world traveller Karl Pilkington is back in front of the camera, whether he likes it or not (and quite often, he does not.)
The unlikeliest of TV hosts follows up the success of his previous series An Idiot Abroad with this two-season, 11-episode travelogue which originally aired from 2013-15 on Britain’s Sky TV and is currently available on Netflix in the U.S.
Rather than travelling the world solely for the twisted amusement of Ricky Gervais a la his previous gig, this series has Karl exploring deep life topics like marriage, happiness, children and death as he travels to multiple destinations per episode to investigate each topic.
While the show does centre around heavier issues, there is still plenty of fun and good humour here for fans of An Idiot Abroad.
Classic Pilkington moments include the host dancing in the streets with hip hop clowns, walking the runway in a fashion show, and playing music on trash bins.