--- title: "The Trip" year: 2010 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-trip-2010" fi1m_score: 81 critics_score: 62 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T01:53:46.385611+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T01:54:05.397857+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Trip (2010) Created by Michael Winterbottom · 30m · Comedy **Fi1m score: 81** · Critics 62 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Two grown men do Michael Caine at each other across a tablecloth until one of them stops enjoying it > Winterbottom puts Coogan and Brydon in a car, points them at northern restaurants and lets them talk. It looks like a freebie and it is a sad, funny portrait of a man who cannot bear being the less liked person at the table. ## Synopsis Steve (Steve Coogan) has agreed to review a tour of restaurants in the north of England and needs a companion, so he rings Rob (Rob Brydon), a friend he does not entirely like, who says yes before Steve has finished asking. They drive north under low cloud, eat expensive food in quiet dining rooms, and argue about poetry, box-office receipts and how to do Michael Caine. Between courses Steve takes calls from his assistant Emma (Claire Keelan) about a Hollywood job that keeps not arriving, and dreams that Ben Stiller wants him for a film. ## Review Michael Winterbottom’s *The Trip* is built on one joke: put Steve Coogan next to Rob Brydon, call the characters Steve and Rob, and watch Coogan mind. It gives that joke six half-hour episodes and the restaurants of the north of England. The premise is thin on purpose. Two men drive, eat and talk, and the whole series bets that the talking will be enough. It is, comfortably, though we can see why some viewers felt they had been left outside the car. The impressions come first, because they are what everyone remembers. Steve and Rob do Michael Caine at each other over dinner, disputing how far the voice has dropped over forty years and whether the nostrils are involved, and it is the funniest passage of British television we have seen in a long while. The competition is never announced and never off. Coogan’s Steve is the better mimic, Brydon’s Rob gets the bigger laughs, Steve knows it, and his face does the rest. The impressions are the surface, though, and the series is about what is under them. Coogan plays Steve as a man who has done well and cannot enjoy any of it: a comedian who wants to be taken for an actor, an Englishman who wants to be in America, a man who recites poetry at the scenery to nobody in particular. Brydon plays Rob as someone content with his wife, his work and his tricks, which Steve finds close to unforgivable. We laughed helplessly at the Caine duel. Twenty minutes later, watching Steve alone in a hotel bedroom ringing a girlfriend on another continent who does not much want to talk, we felt a pity for him we had not expected, and the series does this over and over: a big laugh, then the empty room after it. James Clarke and Ben Smithard shoot the north as it is under low cloud rather than as the tourist board would like it: grey light on the fells, wet dry-stone walls, the car small and dark on an empty road. The dining rooms are lit as they were found, and each course arrives as a short kitchen insert, hands plating, a sauce going on, with nobody ever telling us what it tastes like. That is the point; Steve is meant to be reviewing the food and has no opinion about it. The editors, Marc Richardson, Paul Monaghan and Mags Arnold, had the harder job. The dinners were improvised and ran long, and their trick is to let an impression go about ten seconds past comfortable, so the laugh turns into something more awkward and more truthful. Every episode has the same shape: drive, lunch, walk, dinner, phone call, bed. That sameness is the design, and it is also the cost. By the fourth episode you have either accepted the rhythm or you have not, and the early complaint that the thing runs about twenty minutes long is fair. Not every impression that overruns turns into anything; some just overrun. The dream in the first episode, in which Ben Stiller appears as himself to tell Steve that Hollywood wants him, spells out a longing the rest of the series has the sense to leave unspoken. Claire Keelan’s Emma, Steve’s assistant, is a voice on the phone and little else. This is a series about two men, and the women in it are people the men ring. Most critics disagree with us, or did. The reviews around its first broadcast, on 1 November 2010, split down the middle, and the unhappy half said the same thing: a self-indulgent jolly, two comics doing their party pieces on somebody else’s budget, the only people in on the joke. We think that mistakes the subject for the fault. Steve’s self-indulgence is what the series is about, and Winterbottom films it from Rob’s seat across the table, half amused and half worried, which is where we sit too. The series has since gone to Italy, Spain and Greece. This first outing is the one we return to, because nobody involved yet knew it was a formula. Watch it two episodes at a time, with something to eat, and preferably with someone whose company you are not entirely sure of. Six half hours is about the length of a long lunch, and roughly as much of these two as anyone should take in one sitting. *Fi1m score 81, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics warm to The Trip, and the praise lands almost entirely on its two leads. The reviews agree that the pleasure lies in Coogan and Brydon needling each other over dinner, with the duelling impressions singled out again and again as the funniest material. Several also find something underneath the banter: a portrait of two middle-aged men and their insecurities, which the improvised approach exposes without much fuss. The spread is wide, though, and the dissent is firm. The Guardian sees an indulgent stretch of impressions in which only the performers seem to be in on the joke, and The Hollywood Reporter finds the largely improvised method lazy, with the pair reaching for old routines. Even the admirers admit the impression sequences can drag; Variety judges it around twenty minutes too long. Those who dislike it dislike the very thing the others enjoy. ### Reviews we read (6) - **Variety**, John Anderson (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the two-hander road movie powered by the impressionistic skills of Coogan and Brydon among the funniest in recent memory despite running about 20 minutes too long. The dueling impressions and banter stand out as highlights in this comedy for smart people. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/film/markets-festivals/the-trip-1117943571/) - **The Guardian** (40/100, inferred): The critic views the series as an extended, self-indulgent scene of Coogan and Brydon doing impressions while on a restaurant tour, with only occasional genuinely funny moments like the Michael Caine-off. It feels like the pair are the only ones in on the joke, making the show wanky and hard to fully engage with. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/02/the-trip-coppers-tv-review) - **The Hollywood Reporter** (30/100, inferred): The critic calls the project listless and lazy, suffering badly from being largely improvised as the pair fall back on familiar impressions and old jokes. It smacks of being a freebie jolly with dim prospects for the film or TV show. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/trip-film-review-30028/) - **Collider**, Phil Brown (A-): The critic praises the film's hysterical comedy and human insight into neurotic friendship and middle age, highlighting the impressive impressions and banter between Coogan and Brydon. [Read](https://collider.com/the-trip-review/) - **Den of Geek**, Mark Oakley (80/100, inferred): The series opener delivers understated, frequently funny banter between Coogan and Brydon as they tour northern restaurants, with strong impressions and character insights into Coogan's insecurities. A few impression sequences drag slightly, but overall it rewards viewing as quality improvised comedy from the Winterbottom team. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-trip-episode-1-review-the-inn-at-whitewell/) - **Paste**, Jonah Flicker (80/100, inferred): The review lauds the entertaining dialogue and impressions between the two comedians, noting the charming portrayal of their relationship and personal insecurities, calling it a film about nothing that gets at something profound. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-trip-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Michael Winterbottom - **Creator:** Michael Winterbottom - **Director:** Michael Winterbottom - **Cinematography:** Ben Smithard, James Clarke - **Editor:** Marc Richardson, Paul Monaghan, Mags Arnold - **Producer:** Stefano Negri, Melissa Parmenter, Josh Hyams - **Cast:** Steve Coogan as Steve; Rob Brydon as Rob; Claire Keelan as Emma; Ben Stiller as Ben Stiller; Tessa Walker as Chloe; Charlie Jeffreys as Charlie; Aurore Delion as Aurore; Victor M. Magaldi as Altamira Guide - **Runtime:** 30m - **Release (the US):** 1 November 2010 - **Genres:** Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bPJmy68Rs ## Where to watch in the US - AMC+: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AU, BR, CA, CO, FR, GB, IN, NO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *A Cock and Bull Story* (2005): Where Coogan and Brydon first needled each other on camera, under the same director. - *Sideways* (2004), Fi1m 86: Two men, a car, too much wine and a midlife wound; the American cousin. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sideways.md) - *Withnail and I* (1987), Fi1m 88: The other great English comedy of two men going to the countryside by mistake. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/withnail-and-i.md) - *My Dinner with Andre* (1981): Two men talk over one dinner for two hours and nothing else happens. - *Curb Your Enthusiasm* (2000), Fi1m 84: A comedian plays a worse version of himself, at length, and minds everything. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/curb-your-enthusiasm.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-trip-2010