An Idiot Abroad

[Gandalf]

Come on guys, you think Karl is really a thicko?

The brilliance is - his "stupid" observations actually make perfect sense. I laughed out loud a few times. Thought it was excellent.

That's the thing. He doesn't seem stupid as such, I would class it more as warped. He will say the things that other people have been conditioned away from mentioning or saying. In a lot of the scenes he was just pointing out the obvious. Very much just making observations and riffing on the cultural differences. A lot of "what's the point in this?" or "why do they do that?". I agree, a lot of the time he is bang on the money. I agree with him about the great wall, about the pollution, about the hawking on buses, the squat toilets etc. He is right, but says things and acts in a way that just makes it funny.

Well yeah of course it's funny, he is a comedian, he clearly plays up the dry wit act.

In this episode he never once laughs/smiles during it, even though he is intentionally being funny, apart from when he accidentally threw the needle into the camera mans arm, which was obviously not scripted

For sure, he is really really deadpan. Not even a glimmer of a smirk most of the time.

One of the funniest bits for me was where he was gagging on the food. Surely that was genuine.

That's the thing with this. Obviously he is someone that is not exactly in his element when travelling, but at the same time it's hard to tell just where the line blurs between hamming it up and just being himself.

It's a view that seems to divide people.

I'm sure the gagging was genuine, with him hamming it up a bit, but he knew exactly that he was gonna eat toad, they set all that up in the beginging when in the office with Gervais and Merchant.

Whatever though it's funny stuff

For sure, it's brilliant. Can't wait to see what he thinks of India next.