The only shame about The Trip to Spain is that it’s now on Sky Atlantic, which you may not have. Otherwise, it’s brilliant, hilarious, the funniest thing since The Trip to Italy.
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have now reached 50 – 51, in fact. Which seems to bring a whole new level of issues – existential crises, death obsessions, career insecurities, lies (to themselves, to each other) etc – to their new midlife adventure. Some of which – quite a lot, I suspect – may be real. Plus there are jokes and impressions too, of course.
On the ferry, Roger Moore inevitably makes an appearance, in Rob’s cabin. In Rob. Meanwhile, after some embarrassing dad-flirting with Aurore, the French cabin girl, Steve is being seasick in the loo of his posher Commodore class cabin. And after the Caves of Altamira, which their celebrity status fails to get them into, Michael Caine shows up at the restaurant in Getaria, again via Rob. But he is being Mick Jagger being Michael Caine. “Don’t throw those bloody spears at me,” he says, with a bit of lippy Jagger. They have a Jagger-off. Steve’s is better, has more swagger.
Where did he – Mick – come from? They were talking about having kids late, as Rob has. I love how The Trip just meanders from one thing to another, a little like actual conversation, in fact, only with more – and better – impressions.
Next, Steve is being John Hurt being Joseph Merrick saying: “I am not an animal, I am a human being.” Then having elocution lessons: “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” I guess because it just did – rain, in Spain, though on the coast not the plain. Why Merrick? Because Coogan’s Philomena, like The Elephant Man, missed out on an Oscar, to 12 Years a Slave. It seems to bother him a lot. And the age thing … they’re at the “sweet spot”, he says, often and unconvincingly.
Any literature? Of course. In Italy, it was Shelley and Byron; here it is Laurie Lee and Cervantes. Steve is Don Quixote, idealist and dreamer; Rob is Sancho Panza, his solid, dependable friend. They are two middle-aged men, looking for adventure, in Spain, in a Range Rover.
Now Carpool Karaoke. The Windmills of Your Mind sung by Noel Harrison, son of Rex … The Rain in Spain! See, like a circle in a spiral! And I suppose they’re tilting at them, the windmills of your mind.
At the end, there’s more rain, in Spain. Rob is jogging. Steve is in a bar, chatting up a barmaid, trying to speak Spanish, telling her about the Oscars, not mentioning that he didn’t win. Both are trying to hang on to something that’s gone.
