The Trip Il Riccio, Capri (2010– ) Online

Even though I didn't personally love it, I did enjoy The Trip enough to be interested to watch the second season when it was shown here. The concept is the same as the first season, which is that Rob has a gotten another assignment from The Observer to travel and eat with fellow comedian and actor Steve Coogan, and then write about it, but this time it is in Italy not the UK. I came to the second season hoping that it would deliver the laughs of the first season but that it could maybe add something to the show and make it something more memorable and engaging.

On one side it does pretty much repeat the first season in terms of the comedy; not a great thing but not a terrible thing either. I say this because the impressions and the banter is pretty funny although given that the basic jokes don't change much, it doesn't always work. One example to illustrate what I mean is that, while funny the first time, the "guess the bill" joke wasn't good enough to be delivered almost identically every single episode. For me I still enjoyed the chemistry between the two and the enjoyment of them enjoying their impressions etc, but it is hard to ignore that the material in this show is really limited. The bigger issue I had is that the show continues to appear to not want to push much past this point.

In this second season there are some less comedic moments involving career, family and character, and I did appreciate that they were delicately done, however they didn't tend to go anywhere nor be as consistent as I had hoped. A bit more of the sense of pathos that came from these few brief moments across the 3 hours would have helped the show a great deal – and finding room for them is no problem since they could easily lose a few Roger Moore impressions and still have plenty to go around. The cast go with it well and I enjoyed Coogan and Brydon even though it is hard not to notice that they seem to jump at the chance to do more when the material briefly allows it.

Ultimately it is still amusing to watch but it doesn't vary much and the moments where little touches of substance occur beyond the impressions are reminders of how much better this could have been if it had done more with this aspect. As it is, it mostly sits on the edges and the laughs are there, but don't move around too much or develop as the show goes. Worth a glance, but not what it needed to be.