I fell hard for Cameron Crowe‘s Almost Famous nine or ten months before it opened in September 2000, or when I came across a 1998 draft of the script (called “Untitled”, 168 pages). I didn’t just like or admire it — I was blown away, head over heels.

I was generally delighted with the film but it didn’t get me off like the script did because it felt a little too compressed here and there. It ran 122 minutes, in part because Dreamworks producer Walter Parkes kept insisting on “shorter, shorter, shorter.” Plus the film didn’t include a “Russell Hammond confesses all to Rolling Stone editors” scene that I thought was perfect.

I’ve had Almost Famous on my best of the 21st Century list for two decades now as it’s 90% of a great film, but I didn’t completely tumble until the 162-minute “director’s cut” bootleg Bluray came out in 2011.

I attended a big Almost Famous press shebang during the 2000 Toronto Film Festival, and a moment from that event is burned into my memory. I was shuffling into the main restaurant where the party was taking place, and in a center booth I saw L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan chatting with Crowe and then-wife Nancy Wilson. And I was almost startled by a look in Turan’s eyes — a look of absolute rapture that reminded me of a ninth-grader swooning over his prom date and dreaming about some act of exquisite erotic kindness that might be in the offing later that evening.

Turan, in short, was making goo-goo eyes at Crowe…talking to the man of the moment was filling him with awe and joy and ecstasy, and his eyes…his eyes were doing ring-a-ding-ding backflips. Turan was in love…completely fluttering with feeling.

And at that very moment I made a mental note to myself, to wit: “Don’t ever give anyone slavish goo-goo eyes for any reason or under any circumstance…show respect and admiration but keep your cool…hold on to your dignity. Because if you don’t show a modicum of restraint the filmmaker will remember those goo-goo eyes, and if you don’t goo-goo him the next time he’ll know you don’t like the new film as much as the older one, or he’ll conclude that you were being a phony the first time.”

Let this be a lesson to us all. The next time you find yourself chatting with someone you genuinely admire, don’t flash the goo-goo eyes!

It wasn’t as if Blake Lively hadn’t been warned about flirting with the lore of the Antebellum South.

Eight years ago certain eyebrows were raised when she and Ryan Reynolds got married at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina — a foolhardy thing by current standards but slightly less so eight years ago.

Roughly two years later refinery29’s Leeann Duggan posted a tut-tut piece titled “Oh, No: Blake Lively Pens An Ode To The Pre-Civil War South.” And three years ago The Daily Beast‘s Amy Zimmerman posted an article called “Blake Lively Needs to Get Woke — and Fast,” which partly referenced Preserve and the Antebellum thing.

So now Reynolds is gallantly taking a bullet for his wife, even though the slave plantation ceremony was totally her idea. This is what good husbands do, of course.

The 43-year-old actor addressed the eight-year-old controversy in an 8.4 interview with Fast Company “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds said. “What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home, but shame works in weird ways.

“A giant fucking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t fuck up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Inner Reynolds plea during interview: “Please, descendants of Pol Pot and Maximilien Robespierre…don’t come after Blake and me! We’re good family people, we have kids, we just wanna make movies and entertain and make a lot of money and have a good time. Please don’t shut us down…please.”

Does Hollywood Elsewhere need to be re-patterned? Where could I go to have it done? Are there any re-patterning specialists I can hire in the West Hollywood area?

Yes, the Boone Hall nuptials were on the insensitive side but get real — 2020 culture is a lot different than that of 2012.

Eight years ago there wasn’t this instant BLM socio-political nightmare associated with Southern plantations. 12 Years A Slave hadn’t even been filmed at that point. Eleven years before the Reynolds-Lively wedding a scene from Peter Chelsom and Warren Beatty‘s Town and Country was partly filmed on a storied Southern plantation. And Forrest Gump, of course, had been filmed on a Georgia plantation eight years before that.

All my moviegoing life I’ve been more or less avoiding Frank Capra‘s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (’39). A highly respected political dramedy about idealism vs. corruption, of course. One of Capra’s finest films, they all say. And one of the standouts of 1939, which has long been celebrated as old-time Hollywood’s greatest year.

But we all know that Capra lays it on too thick. And so my thinking was, “Okay, I’ll see it eventually but I’m in no hurry.” I began telling myself this back in the ’70s, and I somehow managed to sidestep Mr. Smith all through the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, and over the last three and a half years of Trump. But a 4K Bluray version was part of a Sony package I bought a while back, and last night I decided to pop it in.

HE verdict: Mr. Smith is a “good” film in that it says the right populist things about governmental corruption (i.e., established stinky politicians need to consider the views of a true-blue idealist every so often), and it does so with crackerjack dialogue (written by Sidney Buchman and Myles Connolly) and lots of snappy attitude and sweaty passion, and you can see how and why it made Jimmy Stewart (between 30 and 31 when it was shot) a major star.

But my God, it wears you down! I felt exhausted after 45 minutes, and I had another 80 minutes to go. By the time it ended I felt all but poisoned by the sugar and the Capracorn syrup. And it felt so fake and cranked up…a big bowl of patriotic whipped cream with sentimental sauce and a cherry on top.

Has anyone in the history of the planet earth every been as naive and idealistic as Stewart’s Jefferson Smith? How could the son of a man who was friendly with Claude Rains‘ Senator Joseph Paine for so many years possibly be this clueless about the ways of the grown-up world?

Why in heaven’s name would Jean Arthur, who’s obviously class-A material and who seems destined to end up as Smith’s girlfriend or wife…why would she even flirt with the idea of marrying Thomas Mitchell‘s cynical Capitol Hill reporter? She and Mitchell were drunk when the idea arose, yes, but it makes no sense — nobody ever marries Thomas Mitchell, and flirting with this degraded Arthur’s value.

And after Stewart collapses on the Senate floor, the guilt-wracked Rains/Paine runs out and tries to shoot himself? Where did the gun come from? And Harry Carey, the president of the Senate (which makes him FDR’s vp), is the only person in the Senate chamber who sympathizes with Stewart’s plight?

I’m glad I finally saw Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. I’m not calling it a bad film but it’s certainly an exhausting one. I will never, ever see it again. And I’m saying this as a fan of It’s A Wonderful Life, which I’ve seen at least six or seven times.

A few days ago I reported that Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, a brilliant Kentucky redneck true-crime drama that I saw and wrote about three years ago, is “still unreleased”, although a late summer opening in Australia via Madman is planned. U.S. distributor Roadside Attractions wanted to open it last March, but then COVID-19 intervened. The current plan is to open it sometime in the fall (maybe) or, failing that, in early ’21, depending on the pandemic.

But now that’s all up in the air due to pirated copies of the film circulating all over, which obviously compromises the streaming rental value. The bootleg availability is due to a premature, scattershot, ad-hoc distribution that has basically put the cart before the horse.

The usual plan for an American-made film, especially one set in the rural heartland, would be to open in the U.S. with at least a modest p&a budget ($8 million in p&a spending had been sought for Above Suspicion) to support the initial release. International bookings follow from that. But not this time. Not with a distribution strategy that any veteran would call penny-wise and dollar-foolish.

According to this Time Out link, Above Suspicion‘s first commercial booking was in Dubai on 3.18.19. Another theatrical engagement happened in Lebanon on 7.4.19, according to the IMDB. This was followed by an Israel release on 1.23.20. On 8.12.18 original Above Suspicion author Joe Sharkey reported that a Turkish-dubbed version called Suphe Otesi (a rough translation of the English-language title) was streaming online. Several months later, per the IMDB, came a “DVD premiere” in Greece on 3.12.20. This was apparently followed by a 6.19.20 release in Japan (theatrical or digital only?).

Perhaps the most egregious opening of all is the imminent streaming debut of Above Suspicion in England on Monday, 7.13. “Egregious” because star Emilia Clarke (Games of Thrones, Solo: A Star Wars Story), who is rightly proud of her performance as the murdered FBI informant Susan Smith and would have granted interviews to generate interest, was never even told about the British streaming release until a couple of days ago.

Last Wednesday (7.8) The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw gave Noyce’s film a three-star review (trust me, it’s at least a four-star effort). Presumably Variety and The Hollywood Reporter will review concurrent with the 7.13 release.

Other territories have been sold, including Germany, Eastern Europe, Italy, Iceland, Scandinavia, Spain, India, South Africa, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America and South America. The pandemic has turned everything upside down, of course, but opening territories on a random patchwork basis, especially before the domestic U.S. debut, is not the usual way to go.

Roadside had wanted to distribute Above Suspicion since it was finished in mid ’17, but a long holdup resulted over a party that wanted to invest $8 million for p&a. Negotiations dragged on forever. As one observer puts it, “If you’re in real estate, the usual thing is that if you say no, the property goes up in value. That doesn’t work in film, however.”

Word around the campfire is that the “comparatively rich” $8 million p&a offer was made in March 2018. The p&a guy wanted America and all English-speaking territories (England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) while two senior investors could have all of the foreign, non-English-speaking territories. The offer concluded with the following prophetic line: “This show is like a melting ice cube, and with every day that goes by the value diminishes. Therefore this offer is open until the end of business (PST) on Friday, March 23, 2018.” The offer was rejected.

Over the last three years, in fact, a total of five such offers were rejected.

I’m told that this investor is nonetheless still ready to make a deal. He/she is “not put off by piracy” and “has agreed today to keep the investment and is happy for the film to play in the U.S. as late as February 2021.”

Noyce has been unwilling to speak about this long-running situation since ’17, but here’s what he says now, speaking for himself and Above Suspicion producer Colleen Camp:

“Colleen and I were devastated to discover that our film is about to be released in the UK. The news came on top of discovering by chance that the Australian release was also imminent. I myself feel like a parent who has lost a child in the chaos of war. The thought that the movie I’ve loved is not even being respected with the dignity of us all being informed in advance of its release just sickens me.

I’m naturally interested in Charlie Kaufman‘s just-published Antkind. What blogaroo wouldn’t be? I’ve only read the opening chapter, but it appears to be a withering satire of a highly self-regarding film devotee slash journalist-author type. The title, which could be interpreted to mean “kind of like an ant”, seems to indicate Kaufman’s attitude about his middle-aged (late 40s?) protagonist.

He sounds like a cross between Humbert Humbert and a Jewish Gerald McBoingBoing. (It’s actually Rosenberg something-or-other.) He’s bald and proudly wears a big, Herman Melville-ish, Brillo-paddy Richard Brody beard as a badge of honor and exceptionalism. He wears “owlish wire-rim glasses” and has a “hawkish nose and sunken blackbird eyes.” And he has a fetching, significantly younger African American girlfriend with whom he has great sex…bullshit.

To go by the Amazon excerpt, the tone of the book is a kind of deep-burrowing insect absurdism. Or, you know, a kind of surrealist extremism that keeps the reader at arm’s length. Nothing is real, and nothing to get weirded out about because it’s Charlie Kaufman wandering through a hermit-termite world…a low-rentish, film-dweeb nether realm, half cave and half steel cage.

Descriptive excerpt: “Trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language…while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of ‘likes’ and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être.”

HE commenter Jimmy Porter said this morning that Kaufman “gets effete film bloggers down to a tee.” The toenail-fungus kind, he means. We’ve only just met, but Rosenberg McBoingBoing has never owned a pair of suede Bruno Magli lace-ups, trust me. And he’s certainly no urban rumblehogger.

In the opening chapter Humbert Rosenberg McBoingBoing is driving through pitch-black darkness in rural Florida, heading toward St. Augustine. Every so often he notices a roadside fast-food joint with the lights on but zero customers. One of these operations is called Slammy’s. Any rural fast-food joint with an eccentric, clearly non-corporate name like Slammy’s is something to be savored if not cherished. If I saw an open-for-business Slammy’s in some out-of-the-way hamlet I would pull over without hesitation. I would order and sit on one of the outdoor benches and phone-surf. I would breathe it all in and smell the air and gaze at the stars.

Charlie’s protagonist pulls in, but only to get some paper towels and a cup of water to clean his windshield with. That’s a significant difference right there.

Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, a brilliant Kentucky redneck crime drama that I first saw and wrote about three years ago, is still unreleased. It was going to open last March but you know what happened. The last I heard the U.S. debut would be in early ’21. The 7.5 appearance of an “international” trailer suggests an Australian opening. The whole COVID thing has thrown everything out of whack.

“The Girl From Lonesome Holler,” posted on 7.24.17: “Above Suspicion, which is based on Joe Sharkey’s 1993 true-life novel, is a triple-A, tightly-wound, character-driven genre flick (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) of the highest and smartest order.

“Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero. Noyce’s film is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these films, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude.

“Noyce always delivers with clarity and discipline but this is arguably the most arresting forward-thrust action flick he’s done since Clear and Present Danger. Plus it boasts a smart, fat-free, pared-down script by Mississippi Burning‘s Chris Gerolmo, some haunting blue-tinted cinematography by Eliot Davis (Out of Sight, Twilight) and some wonderfully concise editing by Martin Nicholson.

“Above Suspicion damn sure feels like an early ’70s film. I mean that in the most complimentary way you could possibly imagine. It’s about real people, tough decisions, yokel culture, corruption, Percocets, hot car sex and lemme outta here. There’s no sense of 21st Century corporate wankery. Adults who believe in real movies made this thing, and they did so with an eye for tension and inevitable plot turns and fates dictated by character and anxiety and, this being rural Kentucky, bad karma and bad luck.”

Initially posted on 10.5.11: I saw the first half of Martin Scorsese‘s 208-minute George Harrison doc during the [2011] Telluride Film Festival, and was only somewhat impressed. It covered the first 23 or 24 years of Harrison’s life, or ’43 to ’69…and I felt I knew all that going in. But the second half, which I finally saw at a New York Film Festival screening, is highly nourishing and affecting and well worth anyone’s time.

Yes, even for guys like LexG who are sick to death of boomer-age filmmakers and film executives endlessly making movies about their youth. It’s reasonable to feel this way because boomers have been commercially fetishizing their ’60s and ’70s glory days for a long time. But George Harrison: Living In The Material World is nonetheless a very good film. Particularly Part Two.

Because it’s about a journey that anyone who’s done any living at all can relate to, and about a guy who lived a genuinely vibrant spiritual life, and who never self-polluted or self-destructed in the usual rock-star ways.

Well, that’s not true, is it? At age 58 Harrison died of lung cancer, which he attributed to being a heavy smoker from the mid ’50s to late ’80s. And he wasn’t exactly the perfect boyfriend or husband. (There were a few infidelities during his marriage to Olivia Harrison.) And he wasn’t the perfect spiritual man either, despite all the songs and talk about chanting and clarity and oneness with Krishna. He had his bacchanalian periods. And he did so with the wonderful luxury of having many, many millions in the bank. It’s not like Harrison was struggling through awful moments of doubt and pain in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But this journey is something to take and share.

Part Two, as you might presume, is about Harrison’s solo career. It starts with the Beatles breakup, the making of All Things Must Pass, the 1971 Concert for Bangla Desh, etc. And then settles into the mid to late ’70s and ’80s, “So Sad”, “Crackerbox Palace,” Handmade Films, “Dark Horse,” the Travelling Willburys, the stabbing incident and so on.

The film is entirely worth seeing for a single sequence, in fact. One that’ll make you laugh out loud and break your heart a little. It’s a story that Ringo Starr tells about a chat he had with Harrison in Switzerland two or three months before his death in November ’01. I won’t explain any more than this.

Scorsese’s doc has no title cards, no narration, no through-line interview as Bob Dylan: No Direction Home had. As noted, I found Part One a little slipshod and patchworky at times. The editor is David Tedeschi, who also cut No Direction Home as well as Scorsese’s Public Speaking, the Fran Lebowitz doc, and Shine a Light, the 2008 Rolling Stones’ concert doc.

From my “Harrison of Liverpool” piece which ran on 7.17:

“Beatle lore-wise, Harrison was regarded early on as the solemn one, the deep spiritual cat (i.e., the last one to leave Maharishi Mahesh Yogi‘s ashram in Indian in late ’67) and to some extent the political commentator and satirist (the lyrics of “Piggies” and “Savoy Truffle“, ‘the Pope owns 51% of General Motors,’ etc.).

“Read this account of George and Patti Boyd Harrison’s brief August 1967 visit to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashubry district, which by that time was the pits.

Two days ago I posted a riff on Jan de Bont‘s Twister. It just, like, came to me out of the blue. I was thinking about the one and only time I saw the 1996 release (at an all-media screening in Westwood), and flirted with idea of watching it again for laughs.

Early this afternoon Variety‘s Justin Kroll reported that Universal Pictures is looking to reboot Twister, and is in negotiations with Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski to direct. Frank Marshall will produce, Kroll said. Uni is “currently meeting with writers to pen the script,” etc.

HE to readership: We all know how this works. I’ll sound like an egotistical blowhard if I demand an associate producer credit, but at the same time it’s a very curious coincidence. I for one suspect that some highly placed Universal hotshot read my piece two days ago and a 75-watt lightbulb went on. In short order Kosinki’s agent was contacted, a deal memo was hastily emailed, discussions with potential screenwriters immediately commenced, etc.

Is it a coincidence that Kroll’s story popped two days after mine? Of course it is! Universal reps, if pressed, will almost certainly claim this, and what could I say? It’s their company, their alleged initiative.

All I know is that the timing of the Kroll story sure seems fishy.

It’s been quite a few years since anyone saw a “boxy” (1.37:1) version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which opened almost exactly 60 years ago. Yes, it was shot with an assumption that first-run theatres would project it at 1.85:1, but it was protected for boxy viewings as well as 1.66 aspect ratios, and the prints weren’t hard-matted at 1.85 either. I know because I inspected one in a booth once. (I was a licensed projectionist in Connecticut starting in ‘81.). And TV stations used to broadcast it boxy. Ditto VHS cassettes.

All to say I would kill to be able to buy a Bluray of a boxy Psycho. And what about Universal offering a domestic Bluray of that German TV version with the slightly risqué added footage?

Gone With The Wind has been shunned once again, this time by HBO Max, and HE is still saying “yes but hold on.” For despite its deeply offensive depictions of the antebellum South and a culture that was founded upon the ruthless exploitation of African-American slaves, the second half of the first act of Gone With The Wind is nonetheless great cinema.

Because, as I wrote five years ago, GWTW is not actually about this odious history and these conditions. Not really, not deep down. For it is fundamentally a film about how life separates the survivors from the victims when the chips are down, and about the necessity of scrappy, hand-to-mouth survival under the cruelest and most miserable of conditions. It basically says “only the strongest and the most determined survive.”

In June 2015 former N.Y. Post film critic Lou Lumenick called for a shunning of Gone With The Wind because of “undeniably racist” attitudes embedded in its story and characters. A little more than two years later (late August of ’17) the board of Memphis’ Orpheum Theatre announced it would no longer show Gone With The Wind as part of the Orpheum Movie Series due to complaints. The board deemed the 1939 film “insensitive” after receiving “numerous comments” that stemmed from a screening on Friday, 8.11.17.

And now another shoe has dropped upon David O. Selznick and Victor Fleming‘s Oscar winner with the announcement that HBO Max will no longer stream it.

The move came partly in response to “media companies reappraising content in light of nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism after the death of George Floyd,” according to a 6.9.20 Hollywood Reporter piece by Abid Rahman.

Another nudge was felt from a Los Angeles Times op-ed by 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, published Tuesday (6.9). The headline read “Hey, HBO, Gone With the Wind romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now.”

GWTW “glorifies the antebellum south,” Ridley wrote. “It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.”

Ridley is, of course, correct. There’s never been any question that Selznick’s epic ignores and sugarcoats the realities of 19th Century slavery, and that its Technicolor depiction of the Old South as a fair land of cavaliers and cotton fields makes it in some ways a dark and odious fantasy piece — the anti-12 Years A Slave. Consciousness does evolve and for all its polish and grandeur, Gone With The Wind has become more and more of an unsavory antique in some respects. No argument there.

“But I feel misgivings,” I wrote on 6.26.15. “I don’t believe it’s right to throw Gone With The Wind under the bus just like that. Yes, it’s an icky and offensive film at times. The moment when Vivien Leigh‘s Scarlett O’Hara slaps Butterly McQueen‘s Prissy for being irresponsible in the handling of Melanie giving birth is ugly, to say the least. And the depiction of Everett Brown‘s Big Sam as a loyal and eternal defender of Scarlett in the face of thieves and would-be rapists is another head-scratcher.

“But every time I’ve watched GWTW I’ve always put that stuff in a box in order to focus on the real order of business.

I recently fell in love with an HE-thread comment about “lily-white anarchist cosplay riotbros**,” but now I can’t find the source. Either way this two-day-old CBS News story about a white Chicago guy, Timothy O’Donnell, having been popped for setting fire to a Chicago Police SUV in the Loop district last weekend fits the profile perfectly.

Because O’Donnell was wearing a Joker mask while igniting the vehicle, and was photographed in the act. A telltale neck tattoo (“PRETTY”) led to his arrest.

It would appear, in short, that O’Donnell was inspired as much by Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, if not more so. The basic anarchist impulse was fueled, of course, by nearly three months of quarantined isolation. Without covid would street insurrections still be happening as we speak? Doubtful.

Poor Chicago…just starting to reemerge from quarantine a couple of weeks ago, only to be trashed and plywood-shuttered by the protests and especially by the looters. Same goes for Los Angeles, New York…all over, right?

Timothy O’Donnell in Joker mask.

Apparently lighting police van last Saturday.

** “Riotbros” being from the same temperamental family previously identified as “virusbros” and “Berniebros.”

Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Greece is the fourth luxuriously quirky travel doc costarring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon…exotic climes, duelling impressions, expensive gourmet dishes, cryptic insult humor.

I loved the first installment (2010’s The Trip, mainly because of their great duelling Michael Caine impressions), enjoyed the second (The Trip To Italy) and didn’t see the third (The Trip to Spain). But I adore Greece, which I saw last night. The island scenery, to-die-for food, biting guy humor, diseased laughter, pine needles and a slight sense of gnawing reality.

Maybe the pandemic helped, but cruising through sunny, colorful Greece (which I’ve never visited) did wonders for my spirit, especially in glorious HD.

God, I miss roaming around Europe so badly. Sometimes it hurts to think about it, and other times not. But generally my heart aches.

One, Greece made me laugh out loud four or five times, and that’s highly unusual for an LQTM type.

Two, their impressions of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier doing the “is it safe?” scene from Marathon Man melted me down like cheese, particularly Brydon’s imitation of a dentist drill.

Three, I’m not sure what to trust or distrust but interesting stuff happens in this one — Coogan gets laid, Brydon feels a touch of trepidation about his wife, Coogan’s dad dies, Brydon’s wife joins him at the end, etc.

And four, Brydon (who stands all of 5’7″) has gotten his gaping bald spot repaired (did he visit my Prague micro-plug guy?). I can’t tell you how gratifying it was not to contemplate that empty patch.

The trip follows the route of Homer’s Odyssey. It starts in Troy (which is in Turkey) and moves on to Kavala, Lesbos, Pelion, Athens, Hydra, Mani and Ithica.

Brydon mentions at the end of one meal that the tab is 300 euros. Tatyana, having been to Greece and Cyprus, says you can eat magnificent meals in that region for much, much less.

Quibble: Coogan, 54, is now silver-haired for the most part. Brydon, I have to say, uses a little too much kindness when he says that Coogan is aging well. He’s aging okay, but his hair is way too short — he needs to grow it out, Byron-style. (Or did when they were shooting last year.)

The Trip to Greece is such an upper I’m planning to watch it again tonight. How’s that for an endorsement? I’m also thinking of re-watching The Trip to Italy.

Brydon: “What would you say is the thing you’re the most proud of?” Coogan: “My seven BAFTAs.” Brydon: “For me, it would be my children.” Coogan: “Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you haven’t got any BAFTAs.” Brydon: “Though you have got children, which is interesting.”

I’d like to be able to watch the whole Trip to Greece series, which used to be purchasable on DVD. The series ran 168 minutes; last night’s feature stopped at 103.