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In a bid to diversify, and drag myself away from yet another Adam Sandler classic, I binge-watched the entire season of Jack Whitehall’s Travels with My Father. Perhaps now might be an apt moment to say something like, “I was expecting it to be rubbish,” or, “A friend made me.” In fact, I was bustling with excitement to indulge myself in a show that I place in a genre I like to call ‘fester-worthy.
Jack Whitehall invites his stuffy father to travel with him on a Southeast Asia gap year in a bid for them to bond. Michael Whitehall, 76, and armed with his Garrick Club tie “in case he sees anyone notable,” finds “a trip over Putney Bridge quite the excursion.” In contrast, vivacious Jack has his eye on “getting lashed” with the “odd cheeky temple” along the way.
Jack dictates – as per usual – with a multitude of chancy and probing questions directed at his father, which tirelessly provoke the same monotonous groan and a rather repetitive insult stamped on top. Hence, at first, one may find it rather difficult to watch Michael – myself included. Yet, begrudgingly, it is also easy to agree with him sometimes – especially on accommodation and Jack’s tiresome acting stint in Bad Education (film and series equally cringe-worthy).
As the six-episode Whitehall travelogue matures, as do the ‘characters’. The duo connect as they leave Thailand for Cambodia. Michael becomes more than happy now to join Jack on the “banter wagon” as they bicker over Jack’s premature age to be sent to boarding school and giggle about the way they look like a sugar daddy and his boyfriend. They are genuinely quite funny. Their relationship really does blossom.
However, this is far more than a quick wit and repartee act; strangely enough, I found it a thorough travel guide. In one episode, Jack hosts a Rick Stein-like cookery demonstration with a French chef living in Cambodia who cooks up snake calamari, duck foetus salad and roasted rat. In another episode, Jack and Michael gauge the mood effortlessly as they visit a Cambodian execution cave, one of the many Khmer Rouge killing sites where around two million Cambodians lost their lives in the 1970s.
Whatever this new emerging comedy travel-show genre is, I am loving it. Jack’s new show blends the already established idiocracy of Karl Pilkington with the wit of Richard Ayoade and even the charm of Michael Palin. You could do worse than to give it a watch.
Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father is available to watch on Netflix.
