Rob Brydon

The Trip episode 3 review

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's post-modern, understated comedy, The Trip, continues to impress.

The Trip: a stand-out stand-in?

Reviewing restaurants can be a surreal task at the best of times. What do you make of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's The Trip?

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon arrive in the Lake District on the third leg of their blokey odyssey reviewing restaurants in country houses. In what turns out to be quite a commercial for the Holbeck Ghyll hotel near Lake Windermere, the pair bicker again over dinner; Coogan, insecure and nervy, Brydon slightly precious and anxious to please. It's all terribly knowing, self-referential and, possibly, more in love with itself than is healthy. But I laughed a lot - proper laughter, too: actually out loud. You don't get that with BBC2 comedies, as a rule. Or with BBC1 comedies, come to that. Coogan and Brydon are a perfect brittle partnership. There's also a slightly tragic edge as we watch two middle-aged men needle each other ("You can't treat your entire life like a Radio 4 panel show"), while at the same time they seek some kind of affirmation. Smashing.

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan - here playing characters loosely based on themselves - are superb comic actors, but there are times when The Trip feels like not much more than two middle-aged men doing silly voices at each other. Tonight, the pair visit a hotel in the Lake District.

I was hoping to add The Trip to my weekly review roster, but after sampling episode 2's "L'Enclume" I have a feeling that would be pointless. Not that this is a bad comedy, because I find it amiable and entertaining, but it's beholden to a rigid formula so far: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel to a swanky restaurant in the idyllic northern countryside, they have dinner while teasing each other and competing with impressions, and then retire to bed after calling their other halves.

Consequently, I feel like I've said everything I want to say last week. "L'Enclume" was effectively more of the same, albeit with a different set of impressions for Coogan and Brydon to do battle with. I particularly liked their attempt to do the best naturalistic Bond villain, Coogan's insight into the acting style of Richard Gere (look into the middle distance and act like you've just remembered something), and the observation that Anthony Hopkins isn't afraid to touch his own face. I could happily watch Coogan and Brydon chew the fat, half-scripted or not, for a very long time. The opening dream sequence, guest-starring Ben Stiller, was also a fun surprise, and I like it when the story touches on the disparities between Coogan and Brydon. The former an inveterate bachelor, the wrong side of 40, desperate to get himself a Hollywood career equal to his hero Jack Lemmon; the latter a more satisfied Welshman seen using his talents to charm his wife over the phone.

The Trip is a series I'm definitely going to see through to its final destination, but I hope the journey's a touch more unpredictable than episode 2 felt most of the time.

Director Michael Winterbottom conjured a pleasing blur of fact and fiction in The Trip, an improvised new comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as versions of themselves on a tour of rural northern restaurants, supposedly for The Observer's magazine. Trying to keep it real made for a flattish sort of badinage to start with, but their personalities were eventually set jousting, Brydon with his impersonation of Ronnie Corbett over the scallops and soup, the antsy, sardonic Coogan mulish in his refusal to be amused.

Temperamentally, Coogan belongs to that class of comedian who would rather be thought a genius than a clown, but it wasn't long before the pair were into a rampant contest for best Michael Caine impression ("Shall I prepare the Batmobile, master Bruce?"). Coogan won it on finesse and followed up with a superb Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh, but you couldn't stop Brydon, who now hilariously had his teeth into Al Pacino (in Heat the movie and, less congruously, Heat the magazine) before morphing into a staccato Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Even Coogan was smiling.

I could have watched more, but they had the other diners to think about. Were they real or were they actors? The food looked real and the restaurant - the Inn at Whitewell, near Clitheroe - is real. It's even true (according to my wife, whose friend Jackie frequently sneaks off there for a quiet coffee) that you can't get a mobile signal. In an unexpectedly touching moment, we saw Coogan tramping up the darkening hill in the cold to phone his girlfriend, who was supposed to have come with him on the trip ("I wanted to show her the north - a piece of me...") but had gone home to America instead. I don't think she was real, though I could have believed she was. Perhaps he'll find happiness with Rob. They're an odd couple but quite perfect in a way.

I don't think I'll be rushing back to The Trip, which started its six-episode run on Monday. Those who've seen Michael Winterbottom's film A Cock and Bull Story, a surreal treatment of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, will recall the droll rivalry of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, playing themselves when the periwigs came off. Watching Coogan's face as he realised Brydon could do a better impression of him than he could of himself was priceless. Winterbottom now films the two funny men going on a road trip in a Land Rover. Coogan has invited Brydon to join him on a one-week restaurant tour of the North for a Sunday newspaper. He needs a companion because he's split from his girlfriend, Mischa.

So here they are, our gigglesome pair, at The Inn at Whitewell, booking in and - oh no! - there's only one room and they may have to share a bed! Brydon is fine about this. Coogan isn't. "You might touch my bottom," he says. They joke about child abuse, swap photos of their children (not at all inappropriate) and compete, over dinner, to see who can do a better Michael Caine impression. Some needling between them goes unexplained. Coogan doesn't seem to like Brydon much, and criticises him a lot - so why has he invited him on the trip? But the conversations are so desultory, and the straining after wit ("Is there such a thing as an autistic impressionist? That's you") so plain dull, you feel they deserve each other's leaden company. I can't wait to read the restaurant reviews.

A repeat of C4's live comedy extravaganza from London's 02 Arena earlier this year in which 23 of our funniest people (and Michael McIntyre) competed to win our laughs in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Charity. Take your pick from Alan Carr, Noel Fielding, Catherine Tate, Bill Bailey, Mitchell & Webb, Jack Dee, Jack Whitehall, Kevin Eldon, Lee Evans, Rob Brydon, Sean Lock, Jo Brand, Jason Manford, Fonejacker, Andy Parsons and Shappi Khorsandi. Phew.

Some chat show interviews don't go anywhere, but that can't be said of Robert Llewellyn's new talk show. That's because he picks up his interviewees and gives them a lift to wherever they want. How we didn't want to label this Robert Llewellyn's new vehicle. Alas, we're just not that strong. What is fresh, though, is Robert's approach to the chat show, as he gives his guests - who include Jason Manford, Rob Brydon and David Baddiel - a ride to wherever they fancy in return for a natter along the way.

The Trip episode 1 review

Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Michael Winterbottom reunite in this understated but frequently funny series opener to The Trip...