I know I'm a latecomer on this, but The Trip was really great. I tried to talk about it to my friend, who it turns out has never heard of Steve Coogan or Rob Bryden. It seemed to me that the show relies on some background knowledge about who they are - and obviously there are plenty of references to be got. But I wonder, what if you did watch it without that background. Perhaps it could be done, it would still work, with these characters (now presumed completely fictional) really expressing enough of themselves to make sense, and to be poignant and effective in the same way as it is for normal viewers.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say about The Trip was that it seemed to me to be mainly about acting. There's obviously the level on which it's about real people 'playing themselves', which must be a weird kind of acting but is definitely that (although not quite in the same way as, say, Extras was). Then there's the constant thread of competition between them, which centres on impressions but is really about acting, as a skill, an art. Coogan's mock funeral oration for Bryden may be the key moment, I think; because as much as we know Coogan's being an asshole, and Bryden is the good guy, the funnier and nicer guy throughout, actually what Coogan's saying - the hiding, the masking, the distraction that comedy and acting offer from basic misery - is the foundation of the programme.
Hell is other people, especially a dinner for two, with someone who wasn't your first choice to be there; it seems like they can only escape that hell by being other people, and still others, and others.
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