While Alan Partridge fans eagerly await the premiere of Alpha Papa, the Die Hard-like hostage thriller that has North Norfolk Digital’s finest facing off against a fellow DJ gone postal, Steve Coogan fans can rejoice in the fact that The Trip, with Coogan and fellow British comedian Rob Brydon playing fictionalized versions of themselves, will return for a second series in 2013-2014. This time, they have set their sights on Italy.
 

While the BBC hasn’t ‘officially’ confirmed the commissioning of a second series, Coogan did confirm by saying: “We are going to Italy. I went there three weeks ago to meet Rob and Michael to go for dinner and talk about what we were going to do. We’re supposed to be retracing the footsteps of the Romantics, of Shelley and Byron and Keats, and I don’t know enough about it. I’m damned if Rob’s going to come across as an authority on it. It’ll be a great motivation for me to read up on it so that when we improvise, I can drop some information on him.”

In the original 2010 series The Trip, which was released as a feature film in the States, Coogan stars as, well, Steve Coogan. Alongside co-star Rob Brydon, Coogan does his best Larry David and/or Rick Spleen imitation in a multitude of never-ending phone conversations with his agent turning down roles in second-rate movies while giving serious consideration to an HBO drama series. In, perhaps, the most ironic line ever uttered in a movie that I can remember, Coogan emphatically tells his agent, “I don’t want to do British TV“.

Lest you think this is just an extended length Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, the actual storyline of The Trip has Coogan and Brydon, playing themselves, sort of, traveling across the north of England on a food and wine, fine-dining, tour of country inns. It is brilliant, and well worth the time.

Throughout ‘the trip’, Coogan and Brydon provide some brilliant interchanges, one of them, in particular, discussing how to rally the troops for their impending battle….
 

 
Look out Italy. You’ve been warned…