Rob Brydon’s Honky Tonk Road Trip overview – proof that he doesn’t want Steve Coogan for a enjoyable travelogue | Tv

While the Euro-hopping actuality competitors Destination X may not have been the Traitors-rivalling summer time smash the BBC had been hoping for, it did give host Rob Brydon a stunning glow-up. The convoluted coach journey clearly needed to provide off a jet-setting vibe, so its grasp of ceremonies was outfitted in deluxe tailoring: boldly colored three-piece fits, silky cravats and yacht-ready blazers. All of a sudden, Brydon had the debonair look to match his classic Roger Moore impression.

His newest three-part sequence, Rob Brydon’s Honky Tonk Road Trip, additionally options some Mr Benn-style thematic wardrobe. The genial Welshman goes full Yellowstone cowpoke in a parade of flannel shirts, rugged jackets and the occasional Stetson hat. It’s all a part of a premise that sees him piloting an imposing Ford Ranger pickup truck on a 2,000-mile circuit of the southern US for a crash course in nation music.

Brydon has been tasked with marking the centenary of the style – or at the least the one centesimal anniversary of the Nashville radio present that advanced into the Grand Ole Opry, cornerstone and kingmaker of nation music for generations – by way of the time-honoured celeb travelogue custom of driving round, gabbing to locals and immersing himself within the tradition. That the centenary has coincided with nation changing into, he claims, “the fastest-growing genre in the UK” – because of Taylor Swift and up to date countrified albums from Beyoncé, Post Malone and others – presents one other angle to discover.

We know Brydon is up for a highway journey and a chinwag because of the varied incarnations of The Trip with Steve Coogan. But at first he appears not sure if he’s really certified to be our information. Watching him confide to a dashboard-mounted digicam definitely brings again beta male reminiscences of Keith, the sad-sack cabby from Brydon’s TV breakthrough, Marion & Geoff. En path to Nashville, he telephones his Gavin & Stacey co-star Ruth Jones for a pep speak. She reminds him that he has some real nation bona fides: their 2009 Comic Relief cowl of Islands in the Stream was a UK No 1. (“Dolly and Kenny only made it to No 7!” she factors out.)

If the “full sensory overload” of an evening out in Nashville is somewhat an excessive amount of for Brydon – a line-dancing try with the UK actor turned nation singer Twinnie sees him faucet out through the opening Shania Twain tune – the 60-year-old is way much less wobbly legged within the interview segments. His respectful traces of questioning appear to gel nicely with southern manners, effectively extracting Johnny Cash tales and basic musings on the spirit of nation music from silvery-haired veterans just like the Grand Ole Opry fixture Bill Anderson and 92-year-old tailor-to-the-stars Manuel Cuevas. His mild method additionally works with youthful weapons, just like the scraggly-bearded hitmaker Luke Combs and the bluegrass banjo maestro Tray Wellington.

While among the anecdotes really feel nicely worn, the opening episode does comprise at the least one real curveball. What on earth is Gary Barlow doing hanging out in a homely east Nashville studio? Apparently he has been coming to Tennessee to hone his songwriting for the reason that Nineties, and factors to Glen Campbell as an affect on Take That’s bulletproof ballad Back for Good. Here, ultimately, is an interviewee Brydon can needle, mock and wind up with out worry of inflicting a diplomatic incident. (Barlow, bless him, may be very recreation.)

With a complete century of nation to contextualise and have fun, it’s comprehensible that this southern-fried tour by way of Tennessee and Kentucky (with pit stops in Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi to return) desires to deal with music and never essentially interact with the present political second. But it can’t assist however seep in somewhat. While guesting on the shiny morning present of the Nashville radio station WSM – proud founding father of the Grand Ole Opry – Brydon jokingly wonders if the US and Canada are nonetheless pals, which throws his slick hosts off their stride. We don’t get to see the presumably icy aftermath.

But for all his obvious self-doubt, Brydon is clearly a great match for this kind of breezy, bite-size format: amiable, , self-effacing and at all times prepared to decorate the half, even when he struggles to discover a fancy cowboy shirt that is available in a medium. Should Coogan be involved that his wingman can do the entire travelogue factor with out him? Definitely.