Customer Reviews

Steven Fry in America [Blu-ray]

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I have just spent the last six hours watch a very personable (and quite funny) British television personality show me parts of America that I never knew existed. It sometime takes a person from overseas to show us things about ourselves and our culture (and our beautiful natural resources!) that we are too close to see.

Stephen Fry explains, in the first few minutes of this FABULOUS six-part BBC series, that he was almost born in Princeton, NJ where his father lived for a while. He's always had a fascination with the US and so in 2008 he brought a real British taxicab here and drove to every one of the 50 states. (Well, that's what he says he did. In reality he covered 51, because the District of Columbia - where he stopped - is not a "state", and he had to leave the taxi in Washington State and fly to both Alaska and Hawaii.. But who's griping? Not me! I don't know how long it took to film this journey but it was obviously 6 months or more. And I give lots of credit to the photographer and Directors John Paul Davidson and Michael Waldman, who are there capturing the beauty - as well as some eccentrics.

The show aired on the BBC and was aimed at UK audiences so you'll hear a few curse words once in a while. And the section on Nevada visits the famous "Mustang Ranch" (where prostitution is legal) and parents may not want to share those moments with young children. But the rest makes great family viewing.

The six hour-long episodes cover a different region. Fry starts in Maine and heads south. From the Deep South he heads to the Mississippi River and follows it all the way from Louisiana (visit to New Orleans after Katrina and to Angola State Penitentiary) to Michigan (Detroit auto industry). Then, the great Mountain States, The Southwest and finally, The Pacific. He visits famous tourist places of course but he gets to places you'd never see on your own. In Knoxville, TN there is a real "body farm". In Miami he visits a Senior Housing compound where he meets "senior male escorts". (The ratio is 10 women to one man!. He visits Kent State and discusses the massacre there, and in Chicago he gets a tour with blues man Buddy Guy.. The "Mountains and Plains" section includes a great interview with Ted Turner - who is America's largest private land owner - on one of his ranches and Fry joins him for a buffalo dinner. I really could go on and on about the highlights but that will destroy the fun! Okay, a few states are just "drive thru" moments and Fry confuses the State of Delaware with the Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania when he crosses on the Cape May (NJ) to Lewes (Del) ferry and says that George Washington "crossed the Delaware here in 1776".

Within minutes of the start you can't help but like Fry and bond with him. At the beginning of Episode Three we find him wearing an arm cast (!) but he never explains why its there and by the next few states, it's gone. And he does ask insightful questions of the people he visits.

I can't recommend this set highly enough! I've even found a few new states I want to visit. This was a massive project to produce and I, for one, am glad that Fry allows all of us to join him on his journey!

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

This couldn't be a more perfect vehicle for showcasing the talents of the multifaceted Stephen Fry. Fry is such a fascinating person in his own right that his playing fictional characters often deprives the audience of his best asset, his real self. That is on showcase here as Fry takes on a journey through the United States in a British taxicab. His choices for stopping points are all his own and showcase his own wide ranging interests. Unlike most documentary fare, this plays as if you are along on a personal odyssey with Stephen Fry and, as his friend, he is relating conversationally to you his thoughts and ideas about America as you travel to and around various points. His choices for stopping points are all as unique as himself. I wish Fry would do more of this kind of show rather than playing fictional characters such as Peter Kingdom and a PR man (as he did in another BBC series). He was best in fictional roles as Jeeves and Oscar Wilde but those kinds of parts come once in a blue moon. I can't recommend this show strongly enough.

I can't recommend this wonderful travel series through the US enough. What a fantastic and touching journey Mr Fry takes us on through one of the world's most exciting and interesring countries. His access to some truly amazing people and places is a joy to behold. Fantastic television that only a Brit of the talent of Stephen Fry could pull off. Come down to Australia now Stephen - have we got some stories for you!

Cut to the chase: I use snippets of this in my U.S. history classes. Most high school students don't know geography in this way -- fishing for lobster off the coast of Maine, and then sitting down to eat it; making ice cream at Ben & Jerry's in Vermont; touring a coal mine in Appalachia; seeing numbers runners in New York City and casinos in New Jersey; local bluegrass in a small town high school gymnasium; the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee (you'll never again see such reverence from high school juniors); blues at Morgan Freeman's place south of Memphis (and following jazz and blues up the Mississippi to Buddy Guy's Legends Bar in Chicago -- the pre-2010 version, before the move); making cheese from sheep milk in Wisconsin; Hmong in Minneapolis; truck stops in Nebraska; Ten Turner's ranches and save-the-bison project in Montana . . . Students like it, they remember it better, and they ask smarter questions about other material we cover.

You won't see the Statue of Liberty. You won't see Old Faithful. You will see America, you'll smile, and you'll learn a lot.

Stephen Fry is a treasure by himself. His view of America will delight you sometimes, but make you think almost always. You could couple this film with John Steinbeck's book, Travels with Charley, and produce much smarter students. I'll wager they'd do better on state geography exams, too.

High school geography and history texts should be this interesting and fun. I recommend it for both history and geography courses.

Stephen Fry, funny as always, combines his own life interests and his British viewpoint of 'The Colonies' and manages to find America as it is. He gets better at dressing American the farther he gets through all 50 States, too.

As a fellow Brit (Scottish) living in America I enjoyed his jaunt through the US of A. Wish he had spent more time in Maryland exploring the wonders of the Chesapeake, and Delaware exploring the wonders of the outlet malls. C'est la vie. Excellent excellent excellent.

It was fun and enlightening both to get Mr. Fry's take on our conceits and to see him won over by the exuberant magic of this country in many instances.

Really enjoyed Stephen Fry's DVD of his trip through America. It is always fun to see our country through the eyes of someone not of American birth, and hear what their take is on this great country of ours.

I really enjoyed this series. I didn't always agree with him but found his perspective interesting and thought provoking. The fact that it was not done for an American audience makes it all the more interesting.

I ran across the listing for this on Amazon UK, & immediately snapped it up(along with "Robbie Coltrane's B-Road Britain" aka Robbie Coltrane - Incredible Britain). This is perfectly suited to be shown on PBS, but BBCAmerica will probably show it, wedged amongst the tabloid & "reality" TV that BBCAmerica has become infested with, and have more terrible commercials than program content. The good news is buying a British DVD means you don't get all the stupid US previews and ads, plus one thing that I love about most Region 2 DVD's: no security seals.
But this program was exactly what I expected, with Fry's wry & dry commentary, letting us come along as he crosses the US, in a left-hand drive English taxi, what most Yanks would call a "London" taxi. What I didn't expect was that he would actually bad-mouth certain places, the most glaring of which must remain nameless....but there was a TV show about it in the 80's with a couple of dicks named Tubbs & Crockett. One thing in that city that was fun was that Fry was dragged onto the dance floor, which is the first time I've seen him shake it since he was doing Dancercise on A Bit of Fry and Laurie - Seasons One & Two("Dancercise is a combination of 'dance' and 'circumcise'"). Usually travel programs are all sweetness & light, but we see quite a few American warts. When visiting St. Louis, we just glimpse the Arch: it's never mentioned, but instead Fry spends the segment with a group of homeless...actually they're not homeless- home is an abandoned factory.
Far, far too much time was spent in Las Vegas, but I guess Mr Fry can be excused: his time was spent doing a "team-building" exercise with Chippendale dancers, & at a beefcake calendar shoot featuring Mormon men. And if I was going to send someone I like to Colorado, I certainly wouldn't send them to Aspen. Could have been worse, though, he could have gone to Vail. And unfortunately, it wasn't raining in Seattle, which is one cause he never mentioned when discussing the Jet City's high suicide rate.(Seattle is not #1 in suicides any longer....the city at the beginning of this paragraph is. Small wonder.)
Like Bill Bryson and Michael Palin, Stephen Fry doesn't take himself too seriously, although he does show off his erudition while at the Mormon men photoshoot, and the man he's talking to basically says "I have no idea what you just said."
The fact this is soon to be available in the US is a good omen. Hopefully Fry's QI TV show may become available. That's a great show, but not stupid enough to be cloned by the powers who run American TV. QI is Quite Interesting, but for right now is just available out of the UK in Region 2 format, or a few clips on YouTube, but if you enjoy Stephen Fry, I highly recommend this, his podcast, and a program I just recently was turned on to Kingdom: Season One. By the way, I just recently bought the book of Stephen Fry in America (UK Import). Good fun.