The Trip to Greece (2020)

(On Cable TV, August 2022) And so The Trip tetralogy of film ends (so far)— The Trip to Greece features heavier material, an extended farewell, and some great footage of Greece… whether it’s landscapes, or our two protagonists eating and imitating other celebrities. It’s almost exactly what was delivered by the first three films of the series, but that’s the entire point of it. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reprise their roles as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon with easy familiarity (helped along by the fact that the film is a distillation of a six-episode TV series, meaning that they have spent a lot of time together in the decade the series has been running). But there’s an air of wistfulness and loss to this (announced) last instalment tracing The Odyssey—even in themes and execution, the film is about death and closure, with the protagonists leaving each other well before the end of the film as they both pursue their own problems and reflect on mortality. This may be a bit too much for a series predicated on the two stars trading quips over good meals, but it may be necessary to provide the series with a sense of closure without necessarily precluding an eventual fifth instalment. (Considering the tonal shift between the end of the third film and the beginning of the fourth one, it’s not as if strong narrative consistency is a feature of the series.) Until then, The Trip to Greece remains a likable fourth outing with two affable performers, and a melancholic break that earns its gravitas from the journey through the three previous films.