TV’s best (and worst) celebrity travel hosts

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Stanley Tucci is sifting rice in an antique Italian mill near Verona. Tony Shalhoub is weeding wheat fields in Japan. Conan O’Brien is cosplaying a Viking in Norway. And Eugene Levy is kind of regretting he left home.

All aboard for the celebrity travel experience, although it’s a good idea to be careful which tour you choose, because some are more rewarding than others.

There’s a sizeable catalogue of performers – frequently actors and comedians, many of them Brits – who’ve parked their day jobs and taken the role of TV travel guides. Michael Palin and Billy Connolly were engaging early adopters, followed by Joanna Lumley and Martin Clunes. Chef Anthony Bourdain brought his maverick style to food-focused excursions; Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman rode motorcycles across continents; Miriam Margolyes explored Australia in a campervan.

For producers, celebrity hosts provide potentially marketable names above the title. For viewers, these tours can offer experiences flavoured by the personality of the presenter. The best hosts have an infectious energy and a genuine curiosity about (and appreciation for) the places they visit and the people they meet. Because who wants a blasé travel companion?

In recent years, a new crop of hosts has been roaming the globe. Here’s a guide to some of them, listed from best to, well, maybe look elsewhere.

It started with a drink. During the pandemic, Stanley Tucci ’s negroni-mixing video went viral, the award-winning actor charming people with his unfussy assurance and urbanity. Since then, his passion for food and drink has blossomed from a happy side-hustle into a mini-industry incorporating books, cookware and TV series combining travel in Italy with a culinary focus.

First came Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (2021-22), which eventually ran here on SBS and Foxtel. Now there’s Tucci in Italy, which is more interested in the technical side of food production but equally scenic. There’s a palpable love of process, a pleasure in charting how Veneto became a region renowned for radicchio and why the once-impoverished Puglia has grown into the country’s celebrated breadbasket. With a mellow voice and a twinkle in his eye, Tucci is an ideal travel companion: erudite, amiable and knowledgeable. Helpfully, he also speaks the language, making interactions with farmers, manufacturers and chefs flow easily. As he often remarks after a tasting a dish whose ingredients and preparation he’s admiringly documented, “It’s very buono.” SBS, Thursday, 7.35pm, SBS On Demand and Disney+

While sampling rye and pumpernickel loaves from a famed Manhattan bakery, Lin-Manuel Miranda chuckles with incredulity to his actor friend, “I don’t know how you convinced people to make this a show, that we just get to eat delicious bread.” It’s a reasonable observation and his host modestly responds, “Like I’ve been saying for 40-odd years, ‘Fooled them again.’”

Well, yes and no. That’s unduly humble because Emmy winner Tony Shalhoub clearly has the goods.