Steve Coogan interview

The hideous Alan Partridge made Steve Coogan famous, but far from happy. Now it seems he's in danger of being both.

Steve Coogan: 'The Trip was gruelling'

Steve Coogan has said that filming The Trip was at times a lengthily and uncomfortable experience.

Director Michael Winterbottom conjured a pleasing blur of fact and fiction in The Trip, an improvised new comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as versions of themselves on a tour of rural northern restaurants, supposedly for The Observer's magazine. Trying to keep it real made for a flattish sort of badinage to start with, but their personalities were eventually set jousting, Brydon with his impersonation of Ronnie Corbett over the scallops and soup, the antsy, sardonic Coogan mulish in his refusal to be amused.

Temperamentally, Coogan belongs to that class of comedian who would rather be thought a genius than a clown, but it wasn't long before the pair were into a rampant contest for best Michael Caine impression ("Shall I prepare the Batmobile, master Bruce?"). Coogan won it on finesse and followed up with a superb Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh, but you couldn't stop Brydon, who now hilariously had his teeth into Al Pacino (in Heat the movie and, less congruously, Heat the magazine) before morphing into a staccato Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Even Coogan was smiling.

I could have watched more, but they had the other diners to think about. Were they real or were they actors? The food looked real and the restaurant - the Inn at Whitewell, near Clitheroe - is real. It's even true (according to my wife, whose friend Jackie frequently sneaks off there for a quiet coffee) that you can't get a mobile signal. In an unexpectedly touching moment, we saw Coogan tramping up the darkening hill in the cold to phone his girlfriend, who was supposed to have come with him on the trip ("I wanted to show her the north - a piece of me...") but had gone home to America instead. I don't think she was real, though I could have believed she was. Perhaps he'll find happiness with Rob. They're an odd couple but quite perfect in a way.

I don't think I'll be rushing back to The Trip, which started its six-episode run on Monday. Those who've seen Michael Winterbottom's film A Cock and Bull Story, a surreal treatment of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, will recall the droll rivalry of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, playing themselves when the periwigs came off. Watching Coogan's face as he realised Brydon could do a better impression of him than he could of himself was priceless. Winterbottom now films the two funny men going on a road trip in a Land Rover. Coogan has invited Brydon to join him on a one-week restaurant tour of the North for a Sunday newspaper. He needs a companion because he's split from his girlfriend, Mischa.

So here they are, our gigglesome pair, at The Inn at Whitewell, booking in and - oh no! - there's only one room and they may have to share a bed! Brydon is fine about this. Coogan isn't. "You might touch my bottom," he says. They joke about child abuse, swap photos of their children (not at all inappropriate) and compete, over dinner, to see who can do a better Michael Caine impression. Some needling between them goes unexplained. Coogan doesn't seem to like Brydon much, and criticises him a lot - so why has he invited him on the trip? But the conversations are so desultory, and the straining after wit ("Is there such a thing as an autistic impressionist? That's you") so plain dull, you feel they deserve each other's leaden company. I can't wait to read the restaurant reviews.

They [Coogan and Brydon] play lightly fictionalised versions of themselves touring round restaurants in the Lake District on an assignment for a food magazine. For a lot of the time, Brydon does his impersonations and Coogan rolls his eyeballs.

And? And nothing really. It's determinedly uneventful, hardly penetrative in terms of character and not especially funny. But what in other hands would be maddening, or soporific ends up being strangely beguiling - an exercise in trying to hold an audience with the tiniest of titbits. Coogan and Brydon give the viewer so little that after a while you start filling in the gaps yourself. Ultimately, of course, it's all down to the relationship, and here the implication is plain - the two of them belong together.

The Trip review

This comedy vehicle is too knowing for its own good.

The Trip episode 1 review

Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Michael Winterbottom reunite in this understated but frequently funny series opener to The Trip...

The conceit is that the two comedians play heightened versions of themselves, which in the former's case seems to be a less obnoxious, more successful Alan Partridge, and in the latter's case, a worldlier, more knowing Uncle Bryn from Gavin & Stacey. Never mind the haute cuisine, The Trip is a shameless example of television feeding off itself, and sporadically very funny indeed. Moreover, speaking of Shameless, it's high time television showcased the beauty of the north of England. There must be people south of Newport Pagnell, too young to remember All Creatures Great and Small, who think of the north as one big, grubby council estate. Much as I enjoyed watching Coogan and Brydon in last night's opener, I enjoyed seeing the Trough of Bowland in my native Lancashire more.

I don't know if you've seen Michael Winterbottom's fine Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, but there's a funny scene at the end of the film when Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, both talented impressionists, are trying to out-Al Pacino each other. Well The Trip (BBC2), also directed by Winterbottom, is kind of that scene turned into a six-part road movie with a bit of restaurant criticism thrown in. Coogan and Brydon are driving around the north of England in a Range Rover, supposedly reviewing gourmet establishments for The Observer, while also addressing their midlife problems, indulging in some awkward male bonding, and continuing the battle of the impressions from the previous film.

I'm not entirely sure whether they're being themselves or engaging in some kind of self-parody. It's a bit wanky and self-indulgent to be honest. There is the odd genuinely funny moment - the bad-tempered Michael Caine-off is good - but mostly I felt I wasn't really in on the joke. Possibly the only people who are in on it are Coogan and Brydon.

All anyone really wants from Steve Coogan is Alan Partridge. And the fact that he knows it, that Norwich's finest swings like a comedy albatross around his neck, underpins the arch air of knowing antagonism he brings to The Trip (BBC2). Here's an anti-comedy if ever there was one.

Featuring Coogan and Rob Brydon playing heightened versions of themselves (their description), The Trip wilfully blurs fact and fiction as this mismatched pair, Brydon's innate amiability crossing verbal swords with Coogan's surly ego, set off on a restaurant review tour of the rural north of England on behalf of a Sunday magazine. It's a perfect set-up, egotistical and pointless, given neither of them knows much about food, which fuels a subtle meander around the oxbow lake of celebrity ego.

Coogan brutally sends up his image with a performance that's so deeply dislikeable you end up admiring his ability to be so sublimely cussed.

'I don't want to do British TV - I want to do films, good films,' he whines to his agent on the phone and, even though you know it's an exercise in fiction and not reality TV, it does feel, well, real.

It's a bumpy trip and no mistake. The laughs are of the dark and despairing kind, built mainly around the pair of them sat at a restaurant table battering each other with impressions, like Ultimate Cage Fighter played out by the voices of Michael Caine and Anthony Hopkins. It's a send-up but it's tongue-in-spleen rather than tongue-in-cheek.

There's a slightly irksome air of self-congratulation but it's hard to take against a show where Coogan chooses Joy Division's Atmosphere ('don't walk away... in silence') as the perfect soundtrack for cruising through the verdant English landscape. Makes a change from The Lark Ascending, that's for sure.