Steve Coogan

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.

Produced by Baby Cow and featuring the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis in future episodes, these delicious sub-half-hour productions recall a lost age of relatively low-budget TV treatment of the classics. In the opener, Johnny Vegas is perfectly cast as the put-upon Tolkachov, who visits his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook) to deliver a spittle-flecked monologue full of pathos and purgatory about his put-upon working and domestic life, only to get more, or rather less, than he bargained for, in the apparently sympathetic Crook's eventual response.

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.

TV review: The Trip

I think it might be brilliant. I say "think" because I still can't believe Steve Coogan's audacity, and the apparent indulgence.

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.

The Trip episode 2 review: L'Enclume

Could The Trip be up there with the very best of Steve Coogan? Mark is slowly warming to that point of view...

Steve Coogan interview

The hideous Alan Partridge made Steve Coogan famous, but far from happy. Now it seems he's in danger of being both.

Steve Coogan: 'The Trip was gruelling'

Steve Coogan has said that filming The Trip was at times a lengthily and uncomfortable experience.

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.