TV Travel: "Spain ... On the Road Again" Feels a Little Bloated

Where: Spain

Last night we watched the latest installment of Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow's food and travel show Spain ... On the Road Again, where the duo traverses the country in a Mercedes convertible, stopping to shop, cook, and eat at various culinary destinations along the way. The show would seem to have everything going for it, with respected hosts, a skilled production team, and rich subject matter, but it somehow never gets its legs under it. While we're neither expert cooks nor expert actors, we have logged all-too-many hours watching travel shows, and this one wastes far too much time trying to endear its subjects to us through their long, pointless conversations. We have enough of those in our regular lives.

The best parts of the show involve Batali and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman discussing the local delicacies and how best to prepare them. There's no question that these guys know what they're talking about, and their comments are interesting, insightful, and occasionally funny.

But such scenes are few and far between, irretrievably diluted by the ramblings of Paltrow and the fetching Spanish actress Claudia Bassols. No matter how nice they are to look at, we rolled our eyes as they went on an on about driving on the left side of the road versus the right. Note to PBS: not every word celebrities say is interesting. We'd think you knew that already.

The show just feels a little lazy somehow. In trying to bring the audience along for a whimsical ride through Spain, tilting at windmills and all that, it comes off as a tedious exercise in milking every drop of entertainment value out of what must be a rather modest well of footage. A good video editor could trim the fat off this rather bland project and leave us with a tightly-told travelogue for foodies. As it stands, viewers should TiVo this one and fast-forward past Gwyneth's epiphanies to the tasty Spanish morsels we're all hungry for.

One more thing, we get that Mercedes gave the hosts a free car to drive on the trip in exchange for some exposure, but there's only so much "product placement" a TV viewer can tolerate before being turned off by it. This is supposed to be a travel and food show, but it feels like a Mercedes commercial. Enough with the car already.

[Photo: Spain ... On the Road Again]

Related Stories:
· Spain ... On the Road Again [Official Site]
· Food Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

Comments (2)

Return to » TV Travel: "Spain ... On the Road Again" Feels a Little Bloated

Watching Spain's cuisine get stuffed into the overly-indulged budge of a human, Mario Batali, and its beating pulse quelled by Gweneth Paltrow's mind-numbing, flat-lined enthusiasm, casts a pall on Spain, PBS, and makes my world a little bit darker.

Lol great synopsis of the show. Yes the product placement is a bit off 'oh oh look at us in our Mercedes hire car!' It's a shame really because Spain has such wonderful cuisine, they should have avoided the big names of Gweneth and gone with a more realistic presenter.

Jaunted

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