Hacker Cinema
Long Way Down
2007 · TV series · documentary · 60 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman, David Alexanian, Russ Malkin
Three years after Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a 15,000-mile journey from the northernmost tip of Scotland to the southernmost tip of South Africa, mixing their love of motorcycles with the lure of far-flung roads.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
He was coming off the high of being the "star" of the new Star Wars movies. He was a main character in the story but not The main character. I recall watching these on physical DVD via netflix in ~2008 and wondering why he seemed (what we now casually call) entitled; I'd been watching the series for ~3-4 episodes before it clicked with me that he was one of the actors from star wars, despite being a long time star wars fan. He was definitely entitled, the blow up was centered around KTM not being interested in what a Star Wars actor was doing and not taking him seriously. I distinctly recall seeing him cry, or almost cry on camera.
That said, ignoring that drama, the rest of the series was quite good, when they published "The long way Down" from Scotland to South Africa I jumped on that and watched it as well. Someone else pointed out they did an EV thing from Argentina to... Alaska? with Rivian, I might go look at that too.
The Long Way Round (2004) - a British television series documenting the 19,000-mile (31,000 km) journey of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman from London to New York via Eurasia on motorcycles. It is a lot of fun and covers incredible terrain and the trials and triumphs of lesser travelled roads and countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Round
There are an additional two series, Long Way Down (2007), Scotland to Capetown and Long Way Up (2020) over South and North America, both fantastic follow ons! Enjoy.
In my personal opinion it's the weakest of the three - way too much time is spent on technical problems with the bikes and cars and very very little on culture and people of the countries they go through, it picks up in the last 3 episodes but that's 3 out of....11? I also hate the Americanised editing style where even in perfectly mundane situations there's extremely dramatic music playing, rapid cuts between scenes, and worst of all, episodes ending on cliffhangers like some cheap TV drama. Long way round and long way down had far more soul to them. But hey, that's just my opinion.
And the other thing - I really wish they waited just a year or two with this adventure, the tech they used was literally on the verge of maturing but 90% of their problems were due to driving prototype vehicles. Literally just a year after filming, there are both electric cars and motorcycles that don't run effectively alpha firmware.