Travel Shows

I’ve been watching this show called “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having” on Netflix. It got picked up by PBS at some point, I’ve watched it there too. I think of it as my replacement for Bourdain’s "Parts Unknown." It’s centered on the same kinds of experiences, food, culture and history. This one’s heavy on the food more so than the history though. Phil Rosenthal is a former comedy writer for “Everybody Loves Raymond”; he’s funny in an observational way. He feigns goofy looks when tasting unusual cuisine and awkward faces when tasting ingredients he doesn’t like. The best segment is a video conference call to his parents where he updates them on his travel. The pair is at least as funny as him, spouting one liners and griping about past vacations. Where Bourdain was irreverent and prickly, Rosenthal is respectful and avuncular.

I’m sure most fans of travel shows have the same thought as me when watching, “I could do that”. Of course I don’t know if I actually could, but it seems like the type of career I would love. I am sure the travel would get stressful, as well as organizing the crews, schedules and finding local help. How many events don’t go as planned, we will never know. It’s fair to say a lot of the preparation for these shoots get tossed out by cooks that don’t show up or restaurants that won’t accommodate the host. Just getting everyone through the airports with all their equipment is a small miracle in some of these countries. Airports can be very stressful; flights get delayed, bags go missing, reservations are lost. Whoever is responsible for lining up all the disparate pieces of a film crew has a massive responsibility. To say nothing of the video editors and the local guests like chefs and guides responsible for the bulk of content. How many hours of footage are cut to make up a 50 minute segment? Maybe 20 hours? It’s just a guess but you have to figure it is quite a bit.

If I could do a travel show what type of niche travel would it be? The food and culture stuff is overrun with copycats. Whichever channel you prefer, chances are they have a version all their own. PBS has 3 that I can think of, “Rick Steves’ Europe”, “Globe Trekker” and “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having.” Steves’ show is probably the longest running but with the newer additions his version seems positively boring. It’s certainly the most PBSy of all of them, paintings and frescoes in slow pan, historical narration, silly 'need to knows'. He covers all the big ticket stuff, The Louvre in Paris and the Acropolis in Athens. Nothing against history but it could be more accessible by having a local tell some of it in interview form. TV is tricky though because it has to be visual above all else. Too many long shots and commentary and the audience tunes out.  Even Ken Burns changed his format a little with his latest Vietnam documentary. He used a lot of video and interviewed former soldiers, families of those killed and historians.

So we’ve established that the pattern of food and culture shows is full. What isn’t full though? Is this just an excuse to travel? Yes, definitely. Global travel has gotten significantly cheaper, as has the technology for the equipment. As long as the on camera hosts aren’t making outrageous sums of money, the project shouldn’t cost that much. Remember this is basically reality TV. Some of the best shows are those whose hosts were not well known to the public before it started. Most of them got famous because of their show. This means it’s relatively cheap to start. It also means a packed field where competition is fierce. I do worry that the mystique of foreign travel will cease a little with the glut of cameras and show ideas exploring every corner of the earth. Still, there is room for more creativity if the content is original. Content is king and great ideas have a way of rising to the top of any format. A low budget show with a clever hook will get picked up by larger services like Netflix or Amazon Prime if the audience numbers are there. When that happens the budgets increase, as does the crew and equipment.

I liked the Ricky Gervais model in “An Idiot Abroad."  Take a pessimistic Brit who doesn’t care about culture, complains incessantly about the weather, the foreigners, the food, the sites and the conditions of the hotel. He has a nervous breakdown near the end of nearly every episode. Gervais created the show but the man they send around the globe wasn’t known for anything except being friends with Ricky. It was a funny twist on a well-trodden formula. Unfortunately even I got tired of the ‘whinging’ and gave up after the first season. 

There are other ideas for doing travel stuff and it doesn’t have to be international. Mike Rowe is very successful with his “Dirty Jobs” show about American blue collar work. I’m not sure is he was popular in television circles before his breakout hit, but I doubt it. Dirty Jobs couldn’t work, on the same level, without Rowe’s charisma. It hangs completely on the likability of its host. Not a bad thing, but it does suggest he could do similar documentaries with the same runaway success.

For the upstart, any potential creator has to answer the question “What would I like to do?” In other words let the content develop around an interest or philosophy. Don’t try to figure out what people want to see. The work is too exhausting to try to gauge audience interest all the time. Do what you love and figure out the nuts and bolts later. It might fall flat. It might be a disaster. But if it’s even a little bit popular and interest grows as the show expands, the love for the idea will push the team through rough patches. I guess that’s true of anything creative.