Steve Coogan

Radio Times review

Even more brutally self-lacerating than Simon Amstell's portrayal of himself in Grandma's House was this extraordinary confessional from Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

A shapeless, talky, part-improvised thing with the will-this-do premise of the pair touring the north of England to review restaurants, The Trip saw Coogan play a needy, competitive egotist, terrified of career stagnation and depressed by his wrecked personal life.

Brydon, equally bravely, presented a comedian who's addicted to easy laughs, constantly doing impressions to avoid being himself. Yes, it was incredibly funny - a whole half-hour could be dedicated to Coogan and Brydon trading impersonations and improvisations, and many episodes weren't far off doing just that. But The Trip stood out as one of the most uncompromising celebs-as-themselves comedies ever.

Never take a TV hit for granted. I'd raved about The Trip and for five weeks it was brilliant, but am I allowed to say I thought the final episode was the weakest, that it teetered on the edge of sentimentality much like Steve Coogan teetered on those stepping stones over the river at Bolton Abbey?

No show is absolutely note-perfect and it's only because Coogan and Rob Brydon set such a high standard for themselves that I raise this minor grump. Real or pretend, Coogan went into The Trip mildly haunted by Alan Partridge, then laid down his best post-Partridge work. Who won the battle of the impressions? I loved Coogan's submarine noises and his Liam Neeson ("I WILL hunt you down"). The Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Woody Allen face-offs probably ended in draws but I think I'd have to give it to Brydon for his Al Pacino, his Ronnie Corbett and his generic Bond villain.

Come, come, Mr Bond, you like food-based comedy love-in travelogues just as much as I do.

The competitive comedians are up early to visit Bolton Abbey: "I liked Bolton Abbey before you liked Bolton Abbey," carps Steve Coogan to Rob Brydon, before they launch into a scene, standing in the graveyard, where they imagine Brydon's funeral and what Coogan might say at it. This is the prelude to a delicious pratfall, a sunlit breakfast and a lot of singing (about the only thing the pair agree on is a love for Abba's The Winner Takes It All.) It's all enjoyable and, as a muted meditation on celebrity and friendship, less insubstantial than it looks.

The Trip gives tourists a taste for the Lakes

The Trip, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, has given a huge boost to visitor numbers in the Lake District, Lancashire and the Dales.

On paper, The Trip sounds bloody awful: a cosy, luvvie giant in-joke for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, showing off their impressions and them eating ridiculously fancy meals. So why is it so completely brilliant? "It's not about the destination, it's the journey," as 'Steve' described his refusal to use satnav, but referring also, surely, to the incidental banter and bickering between them which is gradually revealing their true selves. Or 'true selves'.

And it's also hilarious: their Michael Caine-off, "we rise at dawn-ish" and last night's ABBA duet may soon replace Alan Partridge's most quotable lines as the things fans greet Steve Coogan with. Which will be some small compensation for him still not being able to do Rob's "I'm a small man in a box" voice.

Filling me with feelings of inadequacy for the comparative dullness of my banter, the relative poverty of my impressions - are Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, regrettably coming towards the end of The Trip. There's been precious little else on the box these last few years that has got my wife and me shedding big fat tears of laughter, but The Trip never fails to oblige. I love it for its originality and its daring. And hats off to Coogan in particular for allowing himself to seem so obsessed with his place in the entertainment firmament. Last night, he compared his own three Baftas to Brydon's none, which wouldn't have been quite so funny without the suspicion that he meant it.

All Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan do in this series is tease each other over expensive lunches, bicker a bit and do silly voices. How hard can that be? But after a while you realise there's more to this banter than meets the eye. It's impossible to tell how much is improvised and how much scripted, but when they go off on one of their comic riffs, it hardly matters. Tonight's subjects under discussion include Abba song The Winner Takes It All, film roles they didn't get (or were cut out of) and Woody Allen versus Les Dawson.

We're almost at the end of this unique comedy creation, which serves up English countryside to the tune of top level bickering from Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon over a series of very expensive lunches.

Part of the fun is working out how much of their not very polite and utterly random dinner party conversations have been thought out in advance, and how much is just flowing off the top of their heads as the food gets shovelled in.

Tonight, in the Nidderdale Valley, they're riffing on an Abba song, the comparative merits of Les Dawson and Woody Allen, and they learn more about limestone than they could possibly ever want to. Yes, it's all very moreish.

Steve Coogan is currently showcasing his inner pain to great comic/dramatic effect in BBC2's The Trip, playing himself. In the first of this double bill of one-act plays he does the same as a Russian character created 125 years ago: a man who's supposed to be lecturing on The Dangers of Tobacco but is so consumed with animosity towards his mean and controlling wife, he talks only of her. The script unravels the speaker skilfully (he's good, Chekhov) but to come alive it needs a performer who can put all his bruised heart into it: Coogan makes the crescendo of bitterness and disappointment scarily real. The Proposal, a fast, talky farce, approaches the same theme from another angle, and has another bravura performance: Mathew Horne as a nervous suitor asking for the hand of his neighbour, Sheridan Smith. They're long-term friends, but the years have caused a build-up of tiny resentments more suited to a marriage.

Steve Coogan is currently drawing plaudits for his role opposite Rob Brydon in the wonderfully enjoyable The Trip, but here he turns his sizeable comic talents to this double bill of Chekhov plays. In the first instalment, The Dangers Of Tobacco, Coogan is at his bitter best in a role as tragic as it is comic. There's a distinct change of place as Mathew Horne takes centre stage for the night's second play, The Proposal, which is a fast-paced farce that serves up smiles by the bucket load. Both are simply superb and offer the ideal solution to stave off the Sunday blues.