Guilty Pleasure: An Idiot Abroad

The Science Channel calls it a practical-joke-turned-social-experiment. An Idiot Abroad is the best reality show there is since The Amazing Race. Like The Amazing Race, An Idiot Abroad showcases the magnificent beauty of the world, and its historical and cultural (sometimes, idiosyncratic) richness. The latter, however, allows the “cast” and the viewers more opportunity to learn about the visited countries in comparison to the fast-paced race around the globe.

An Idiot Abroad is the brainchild of radio colleagues and longtime friends, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. For most witty and comedy-loving people, the producers alone are already a good selling point. For the eight-episode first season, Gervais and Merchant send their, err, “culturally-challenged” friend, Karl Pilkington to the New Seven Wonders of the World (and some), encouraging him to voice out his thoughts and impressions of the places he visits. These thoughts and impressions are generally rants that those familiar (and a fan) of [quintessential] British sarcasm are sent to the floor with aching stomachs from all the laughing. Merchant calls Pilkington the real-life Homer Simpson, and, in an interview with Obsessed with Film, Gervais says, “He has the most unique outlook on life and says things without thinking, which apart from being stupid are also very funny.”

One of my favorite scenes is when Pilkington, tired of the local cuisine, decides to dine at a KFC for lunch. Here, he encounters something that made this cynical narrator impressed. And, take note, he is almost NEVER impressed. This KFC that he had visited is fully-manned by deaf staff . He later learns that it is a means for the Egyptian government to allow the hearing-impaired to earning a living for themselves.

Of course, Gervais and Merchant did not make it easy for Pilkington. They booked him at substandard hostels, they made him eat peculiarly exotic cuisines and made him do all sorts of [oddly] cultural things, all without letting Pilkington in the know.

It is not American Idol, but it had good enough reception that a second series is to be released late this year. This new series will be called An Idiot Abroad: The Bucket List. (Some reports say, though, that the title is not yet final.) I urge you all to check it out and see the world through Karl Pilkington’s eyes!