| Sunday 9 November 9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE |
the dramatic landscapes of
New Mexico
Stephen Fry goes South West, as he continues his tour of all 50 States of the USA.
The high mesas of New Mexico are the starting-point for Stephen’s journey through the dramatic landscapes and peoples of the South West. Here, the lives of physicists at the Los Alamos Lab, who are unravelling the mysteries of dark matter, contrast starkly with those of the eco-house dwellers living “off grid” near Sante Fe.
Staying with the Navajo Indians in Monument Valley in Arizona, Stephen learns to weave a basket, before heading to the sublime beauty of Lake Powell, and life aboard a luxurious houseboat.
He takes a Second World War Flying Fortress Bomber to the “Boneyard” in Tucson, where 3,000 military planes are eerily mothballed, before living out a fantasy by becoming a cowboy at the Old Tucson Studios.
In Nevada, Stephen meets semi-naked Mormon missionaries during their calendar shoot, and is initiated into the intricacies of brothel life by madam extraordinaire, Susan Austin, before heading over the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Sunday 2 November
9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE
Stephen Fry travels the entire length of America, a country that could nearly have been his home, as his road trip across all 50 States continues. He travels from the northern to southern borders, where he sees the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the prairies – “America’s Breadbasket”.
Stephen starts with the airborne border patrol agents at the Canadian border in the stunning mountains of Montana and ends at the very different border with Mexico in Texas.
Along the way, he meets Ted Turner and some of his 50,000 bison, and a Wyoming rancher couple, who have particularly close encounters with wolves and bears. He mushes through the snow on a dog-sled and overdoses on carbohydrates at a German diner in Bismarck, North Dakota. Read the rest of this entry »
| Sunday 26 October 9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE |
Stephen Fry takes the bus to Clarksdale
Stephen Fry follows the mighty Mississippi River from its southern-most tip in Louisiana through to its source in the snowy wastes of Minnesota, on the border with Canada, as he continues his road trip around every state in the USA.
It is Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday – in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Here, Stephen meets high priestess Sallie Anne Glassman, whose voodoo charms are employed to try to fix his recently broken arm.
Driving through the Lower 9th Ward with Iraqi veteran Isaiah, Stephen witnesses for himself the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, before heading to Angola, Louisiana’s notorious State Penitentiary. There, warden Burl Cain takes him on a tour of the 18,000-acre prison, where 5,000 inmates, the majority of whom are African-American, are locked up for life.
In Mississippi, he heads to Clarksdale, the home of the Delta Blues. He joins Morgan Freeman at his blues club and finds out what’s happening to the Delta now. Read the rest of this entry »
| Sunday 19 October 9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE |
A flavour of the South:
Stephen Fry is shown around the Woodford
Reserve bourbon distillery in Versailles, Kentucky
“For years,” says Stephen Fry, “I have been intrigued and enriched by what seems to be America’s most characterful region. A place of cotton, courtesy, gospel music, mint juleps, divine accents and sultry southern belles.”
In the second episode of his tour of America, Stephen gets back into his trusted taxi and heads for the Deep South – a distinctive part of America that has always intrigued him. Starting in West Virginia, where 50 per cent of the energy comes from coal, he joins a shift of coal miners on a trip deep underground. It’s hot, dark and, for a man of Stephen’s height, very uncomfortable.
From Virginia it’s on to Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby, where Stephen visits the auction house where the most expensive horse flesh in the world is traded.
In Tennessee he experiences the highs and lows of life, from a Bluegrass music jamming session to a more sombre scientific site known as a “body farm”, where a team of scientists help in murder cases by work with corpses to research “time since death”.
Needing a lift from grim thoughts of mortality, Stephen takes to a hot air balloon across the skies of North Carolina.
Stephen spends Thanksgiving in Georgia before heading to Miami where, as he drives his taxi along Miami Beach, he reveals his disdain for the southernmost part of America: “I’d rather be curled up in a snowy cabin with a hot whisky or, quite frankly, a Horlicks than I would spend half an hour in this rotting place.”
Finishing up in Alabama, Stephen enjoys the extraordinary hoopla of a college ball game, complete with air-force jets.
Stephen Fry was very nearly an American. Just before he was born his father was offered, but turned down, a job at Princeton University. In this six-part series, the writer and actor explores the country that he might have called home.
9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE
Stephen Fry was very nearly an American. Just before he was born, his father was offered, but turned down, a job at Princeton University. The writer and actor explores the country which he might have called home and which has always fascinated him. Stephen hires a US cab and sets about visiting each and every one of the 50 US States, to experience for himself the variety of people and places that make up the country.
In this first episode, Stephen explores the states that make up New England, before heading south to the nation’s capital and ending up at the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, where Abraham Lincoln made his famous address.
Stephen’s journey begins in the state of Maine in the easternmost corner of the country, where he learns how to catch a lobster with the Macpheil family before venturing to New Hampshire where the presidential primaries are in full swing. Passing through the autumnal splendour of the White Mountains, and pausing to reflect on America’s economic power at Bretton Woods, he boards the world’s first cog railway to the summit of Mount Washington.
From there, he heads into Vermont and stops at the Ben and Jerry ice-cream factory, to mix his own flavour; “Even Stephens”. Driving into the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, Stephen visits Topridge, and, donning a plaid shirt and baseball cap, goes native and becomes an unsuccessful deer hunter.
Next stop is Boston, followed by New York City, where Stephen escapes the clutches of some “Goodfellas”, who spring to life as if from a Scorcese movie in their social club in Queens. He then takes musician Sting for a ride in the back of his cab to see what an Englishman makes of New York.
Passing swiftly through Delaware and Maryland to Washington DC, Stephen meets up with Wikipedia founder James Whales and learns a thing or two about politics from satirical group Capitol Steps, before meeting up with Gettysburg’s very own Lincoln impersonator.
| Sunday 16 November 9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE |
road trip around the USA
Stephen Fry concludes his epic journey through all 50 States by exploring those that touch the Pacific Ocean. Starting in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he first meets Jony Ive, Apple’s design guru, before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to join Tom Allmann, the Sheriff of Mendocino. He joins Tom on a drugs bust during which a few thousand marijuana plants are uncovered.
Travelling through the giant redwood forests of Northern California and Oregon, Stephen meets dope-smoking students and arboreal activists who are trying to protect the pristine forests. He also meets a man who’s convinced he’s met a Bigfoot.
Leaving his trusty London cab in Seattle, Stephen flies to Kodak Island in Alaska, where he witnesses a Russian Orthodox Easter and goes hunting for bowhead whales with a group of Inuits up in the far North in Barrow.
In the far south of the country, on the islands of Hawaii, Stephen learns about the flip side of Waikiki Beach from Terry Pennington, a real-life Magnum PI. He then goes swimming with sharks and enjoys a hula with champion surfer Titus on a spectacular beach on the island of Kauai.
On Big Island, using the world’s finest telescope at the Keck Observatory, Stephen witnesses stars exploding, with astrophysicist Alex Filipenko, before a fitting finale on the lava fields that flow into the ocean creating new land, and yet more America.
