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#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN PROFESSIONAL#
#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN SERIES#
#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN TV#

#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN SERIES#

One host who exhibits some of the same open-mindedness and humor, along with a more genuinely modest and self-effacing attitude, is Zane Lamprey, who has done a series of alcohol-related shows on Fine Living, the Food Network and other cable channels.

Bourdain and his shows are not immune to it, but in contrast to his channel mates he seems to start from a place of curiosity rather than spectacle or list checking, and his shows reflect a more genuine, if no less stage-managed, connection with the cultures he drops in on. It’s probably inevitable that there will be an aspect of ugly-Americanism in any television show - reality, documentary, news, drama - that involves a camera crew, a few producer-researchers and a host crashing into a foreign country for a few days to assemble 30 or 60 minutes of TV. Bourdain’s persona - his taste for organ meats and other uncommon edibles - and turned it into a franchise. Zimmern, the channel’s bland Bourdain clone who has taken one aspect of Mr. (Her most recent Travel Channel show was “Samantha Brown’s Asia” in 2010.) Even more reductive is the shtick of Mr. Brown’s all-American approach, the khaki-clad, cute as a button soccer mom who powers through her foreign itineraries with an iron will and a relentless, irritating energy. It is, if not easier, then at least a safer bet to take Ms.

#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN TV#

Bourdain the lesson there would be that nothing looks less genuine on TV than actual sincerity. Brown and the “Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern are more sincere in what they do than Mr. Authenticity is the holy grail of reality TV, and he seems to project it effortlessly. Bourdain’s larger television persona: smart, profane and sarcastic but, most important, real. This attention to the prosaic, something other hosts gloss over in their desire to focus, simply, cheaply and shallowly, on the weird or wonderful attributes of their destinations, is part of Mr. Brown’s expense but also an honest illustration of what it’s like to disembark after a marathon flight, greasy, groggy, grouchy and hungry to boot. His nighttime cab ride, which comes in the opening minutes of the “Layover” premiere, is not just an occasion for a cheap joke at Ms. In “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” which was nominated for four Emmys this year in its seventh season (it lost for best nonfiction series to “American Masters” on PBS), and in his new series, “ The Layover,” which begins Monday night on the Travel Channel, one of his accomplishments is to pay attention to the actual experience of travel - the getting to and from.

#THE LAYOVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN PROFESSIONAL#

Bourdain remains the best of the Americans abroad on TV: the professional voyagers, concentrated on the Travel Channel but also popping up in places like the Food Network and PBS, who have largely taken over the role travel and food writers once held in feeding our appetite for vicarious exoticism. It’s childish and mean, and it’s also illustrative of why Mr. Bringing up one of his favorite whipping girls, his fellow Travel Channel host Samantha Brown, he grins like a schoolboy and delivers the zinger: “Sam Brown has an assistant who stands outside the bathroom and runs in and takes the blame.” SLUMPED in the back seat of a Singapore cab, punchy after a 17-hour flight but rising to the challenge of the omnipresent camera, Anthony Bourdain gets a little silly about the odorous consequences of long-distance air travel combined with subpar airplane food.