Rob: Hello.
Steve: Hey Rob, Steve.
Rob: Ooh. Hiya, how are you?
Steve: Good, good… Listen, are you free next week… to go away?
Rob: Where?
Steve: Ahm… it’s kind of a tour, a tour of the north… restaurants, really good restaurants.
Rob: Right… Why me?
Steve: Er… Misha can’t come and I don’t wanna go alone… I’ve asked other people, but they were too busy. Uhm… it’s a job, I’m not seeing it as… going on holiday with you or anything weird… it’s… it’s for the Observer Magazine… So… you know… you wanna come?
I know, I know, I should be reading the first novel of recent Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa for my literature column (in fact, I’m halfway through it as of now). Many will say that I should stick to that, but I can’t help but try to open your minds to new content that maybe you have not been aware of (anyway that’s what all of the writers here do, half of the time I don’t know the movie/band/TV-series they’re talking about and just go on reading and getting myself an education). Maybe there are people out there who know what I’m going to talk about, it’s not really that obscure, just not really well publicized (at least from the sites I receive the news from).
I want to talk a bit about this BBC2 miniseries called ‘The Trip’, which premiered this year, which runs for six episodes each lasting a total of 28 minutes, directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also directed ‘The Killer Inside Me’ this year. There’s also a feature-length movie edited from this series which has run in some festivals with its own share of praise. This has been described in many venues as a sitcom of sorts, even if it really doesn’t fit in the genre/format. It doesn’t have a laugh track, it’s not filmed on a studio, the episodes while they can be seen on their own, seeing them in order is where the real flavor is at..The only characteristics of the genre/format that are present is the recurring cast of protagonists, the changing supporting characters, the comedic element and the length of the episodes.