• Travel documentary

•Karl Pilkington travels thousands of miles to visit 7 wonders of the world.

•Puts Karl out of his comfort zone which turns the documentary into a comedy.

•Created by Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant, funded by Sky1.

Each episode starts with an introduction interview where Ricky tells Karl where he will be going.

After the interview there is usually a short scene of Karl getting ready to go and then a scene showing the journey to the country.

Karl is always alienated with each place he goes to which is summarised by his opinions and short clips from self interviews.

Each episode consists of Karl visiting a wonder and then trying out local lifestyles and traditions. We are constantly given Karl’s unique opinions on everything.

This style of documentary mimics the travel series’ of Michael Palin and David Attenborough, but in a less serious tone.

The music throughout the series is often slow and simple. Made on mostly brass instruments it gives Karl a goofy, simplistic tone. Whereas in other travel documentaries music from the local setting is played to give the audience a feel of the environment in an exciting and adventurous

tone.

The camera mainly follows Karl but also focuses the changes of scenery by using introduction shots. As they are travelling, most of the shots are filmed using light cameras and are often moving and unstable.

There are plenty of reaction shots of Karl when he notices something bizarre. These are always close up, focusing on his facial expressions as he is put out of his comfort zone repeatedly.

After an eventful scene there is usually a self interview in his hotel room where Karl describes what had happened to a hand held camera looking very tired and fed up.

The objective of the documentary was to give Karl a greater understanding of the world outside England and over the course of the documentary the viewer feels as though they are accompanying Karl along his journey.

The viewer is also discovering new and exciting things as well as Karl. This is an important part of the viewing experience which pulls the audience in.

In this style of documentary there are often interviews or interactions with certain people who they come across in their journey. In this series most of these interviews were set up by Ricky Gervais to purposely put Karl into funny situations, such as Karl being abducted by Israeli counter terrorists or spending the night with family in Jordan who try to make him eat a goat’s head.

In Michael Palin’s series the interviews are very formal and are taken seriously. However in this series Karl’s interviews are very informal, as he often uses slang and asks pointless questions.

Karl is not a professional documentary maker and Ricky Gervais had never produced a documentary series before. This can be seen by the informal style of the series however the final product turned out successful.