Trip, the

It's exciting to watch a movie genre being developed, creating its own standards and challenges. There's one that lacks an officially recognised title so far, but might be named the "biocom" or "reality caper". It fictionalises comedic pseudo-reality in a bogus sitcom-style setting, and has primarily been a TV phenomenon in the past few years.

On TV, the concept has been used by Larry David for Curb Your Enthusiasm in the USA and by Ricky Gervais for Extras in the UK. There were precedents in cinema, where many of Woody Allen's New York-set films featuring his own persona were virtually autobiographical and/or wish fulfillment exercises. Various other comedians appeared in movies framing their stage or TV personalities, and Jim Jarmusch showcased a galaxy of comic actors playing "themselves" in Coffee & Cigarettes (2003), a delightfully mixed bag of short sketches.

Which, by the way, illustrates the movie industry's inability to operate beyond anywhere near as many as six degrees of separation. One of the cleverer sets in the Jarmusch compendium was a two-hander featuring Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina as a pair of English actors at opposite ends of the success scale (Coogan being cast as the top dog, even though he didn't get a big Hollywood breakthrough until the remake of Around the World in 80 Days was released the following year, in 2004).

Back in the UK, Coogan had been best known as TV comic character Alan Partridge since 1994 (a decade after his first TV work consisted of providing impersonations for the Spitting Image animated satire series). His first major movie acting role arrived in 2002, with 24 Hour Party People, directed by Michael Winterbottom, already a prolific and prodigious British talent. They worked together again in 2005 on A Cock and Bull Story, a partly-improvised depiction of a movie company attempting to film Laurence Sterne's classic, and supposedly unfilmable, fictional autobiography, Tristram Shandy (co-produced by BBC-TV).

Coogan's comic sidekick as a fellow actor in that movie forerunner of the Extras TV concept was Rob Brydon, a Welsh-born British TV comedian and character actor. (Other special ingredients in Winterbottom's beguiling experimental, mock-period drama included Michael Nyman's music, Marcel Zyskind's cinematography, and Jeremy Northam playing the director.)

A few years later, Coogan, Brydon and Winterbottom joined forces again, and BBC-TV backed their idea of a six-episode, buddy-cum-road-movie sitcom featuring a "Coogan" character commissioned to write newspaper reviews of gourmet restaurants in scenic northern England settings. "Brydon" joins him on The Trip for the meals, driving tour and the pair's love-hate friendly banter. It ticked a bonanza of boxes for an audience-friendly British TV series, blending photogenic cuisine and wry comic personalities, beautiful rural scenery and family dramas, semi-documentary and odd-couple sitcom.

Like The Thick of It, it was an addictive TV series that demanded concentrated viewing; one episode was never enough. Being a sequence of vignettes and sightseeing excursions directed by Winterbottom, it was also an above-average TV production with ravishing shots of exquisitely-plated food, quick-cut shots of each kitchen's chefs at work, and beautifully composed scenes of Yorkshire and Lakeland natural beauty. Every now and then, lines from Lakeland poets were recited, mostly in impersonated actors' voices, with serio-comic local history footnotes used as material for comic set-pieces and inter-play.

Ben Smithard was the series' very note-worthy cameraman, and he and Winterbottom achieved marvels of close-up filming in the cramped settings of a Range Rover and country hotels' dining rooms and bedrooms. Occasional side glances at the two actor's fictionalised families in London varied the pace and mood of each episode well, while serving to amplify the supposed character traits and flaws (especially egocentric Coogan's) of the comic leads. Throughout, of course, they are ad-libbing (or riffing on pre-scripted comic ideas), playing comic ping-pong across the dinner tables and their auto's front seats. Most memorable are their competitive impersonations of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Billy Connolly, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton and other distinctive voices.

Unlike Larry David and Ricky Gervais, Coogan and Brydon don't rely on guest stars to add fun and frissons to their comic vignettes. Only one appears in the six episodes, and it's no surprise to see that it's Ben Stiller, who'd already visited one of Gervais's Extras sets for a delightful display of self-mockery. This time, he plays a cameo, as himself, being a Hollywood pal in a dream encouraging Coogan to grab the chance of a seven-year TV drama series contract.

Happily (one hopes), it's been reported that Winterbottom has created a feature film from the six episodes, to be released in 2011; it'll be interesting to see what ideas are thought best for the big screen. If it succeeds, will it help Coogan and Brydon to make a new series, if they want to? Or will they feel that one series of edgy self-teasing may be enough of a good thing?

[The second disc in the BBC's DVD set includes deleted scenes, and real documentary coverage of the six host restaurants' kitchens and exquisite dish presentations.]