An Idiot Abroad is a series that makes the subliminal premise of most reality shows—watch stupid people doing stupid things—explicit. Of course, the idiot in question is not a former '80s rock star or a reject from The Bachelor, but rather Karl Pilkington, the “round, empty-headed, chimp-like Manc, moron, buffoon, idiot” and star of The Ricky Gervais Show. The ostensible idea of the show (recounted at annoying length in the opening credits) is this: Can travel broaden the mind of the consummate “Little Englander,” a man who didn't try pasta until he'd reached his 20s? But really, the question remains what it has always been: Is Karl Pilkington an idiot, an idiot savant, or the decade's most ingenious performance artist?
After watching all eight episodes of An Idiot Abroad (and listening to God knows how many hours of the podcasts that made him famous), I'd say that Karl most definitely is in on the joke. That's not to say he's some kind of brilliant deadpan comic, or the second coming of Mitch Hedberg—merely that Pilkington knows he's the butt of the joke and is fully aware that Merchant and Gervais are out to make his life as miserable as possible.
For the record, I don't actually think Pilkington is stupid or dim; I do, however, think Pilkington might be clinically depressed. The strangest thing about this idiot is not his ignorance, but his utter joylessness. Pilkington's endless grousing is understandable when he's booked in a squalid 4-pound-a-night hostel in Rio de Janeiro or in a flimsy, bug-infested tent in the Amazon. But Pilkington exists in a state of persistent mild irritation that seems to have little to do with his surroundings; you get the sense that he'd be “whinging on” about something or another no matter where he'd landed. The particular challenges of foreign travel have little to do with his constant malaise. Pilkington rarely expresses any kind of pleasure, much less awe, grace, excitement, humility, or wonder. He isn't even curious, really, unless wondering why people don't do things the same way you do qualifies as curiosity. Weirdly, Pilkington never seems to get all that mad, either, considering the torture that Gervais and Merchant put him through. Cranky, sure, but he's not passionate enough to be furious. His emotional repertoire ranges from indifference to mild anger.
In Brazil, Pilkington tells Celso, a female impersonator in garish drag, that he looks like Worzel Gumidge, an obscure reference to a British children's show from the 1970s (An admitted Anglophile, I still had to consult Google on that one.) “Why do you make no effort to try and speak to people in terms they might understand?” an exasperated Merchant later asks him, hitting the nail on the (round, bald) head. Pilkington's behavior is funny, but there's also something ever so slightly sad about it, too, as if he suffers from an undiagnosed case of Asperger Syndrome. Over the course of his journeys, Pilkington's connections with others are, at best, fleeting. The closest he gets to warm-and-fuzzy is sharing a bag of his favorite potato chips (Monster Munch, for the record) with a Mexican family. “I was hoping that they'd get a taste of something new, and they might think, 'You know what, I might leave this little village and go into town and get some crisps.'” Do I need to point out the irony here?
Occasionally, though, Pilkington's myopia yields some surprisingly trenchant—and yes, clever—observations. He begrudgingly admits that the Taj Mahal is “alright,” but what he's really wondering is whether the guy who built the world's most famous monument to love actually treated his wife well “when she was still knocking around.” Turns out she was one of four wives, so perhaps Pilkington has got a point. Discussing the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead, Pilkington notes that “We find it all a bit morbid, death. Don't we? We certainly don't like to talk about it… but then we waste days dedicated to like Pancake Tuesday. Why have we got a day for pancakes?” Pilkington might not be an ideal tour guide, but he does have a pithy way of distilling each of the countries he's visited.
Say what you will about Pilkington, but An Idiot Abroad makes the most of its charisma-free star. Shot in lush HD, the show looks fantastic. Series directors Krishnendu Majumdar and Luke Campbell also have an eye for setting up shots that wryly emphasize Pilkington's fish-out-of-water status—like when he dines alone at a Pizza Hut in the shadow of the Great Pyramid. With the additional benefit of some deft editing and a cheeky, Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque score, Pilkington can seem like the British equivalent of a Coen Brothers character, a rube dragged outside his comfort zone, to great comic effect. In the most sublimely funny moment in the series, Pilkington answers his cell phone while visiting the step pyramid at Chichen Itza at dawn. It's Suzanne, his longtime girlfriend, calling to find out how the DVD player works. You can take the boy out of Little England, but you can't take the Little England out of the boy.