Stephen Fry in America | |
---|---|
Starring | Stephen Fry |
Narrated by | Stephen Fry |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 1 |
No. of episodes | 6 |
Production | |
Production location | United States |
Running time | 60 min |
Original release | |
Network | BBC One BBC Two (repeat) |
Release | 12 October – 16 November 2008 |
Stephen Fry in America is a six-part BBC television series in which Stephen Fry travels across the United States. In the six-part series he travels, mainly in a London cab, through all 50 of the U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
The episodes are regularly repeated in the UK on Dave. It was aired in the United States on HDNet. In Australia, the program screened on ABC1. [1] The ratings were so successful that the broadcaster decided to finally air Fry's other BBC programme, QI the next month. [2]
The series was filmed in two segments, the first in October–November 2007, and the second in February–April 2008. Special guests featured on the show include Sting, Jimmy Wales, Morgan Freeman, Buddy Guy, and Ted Turner.
# | Title | Subject | States visited | Airdate |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | New World | Fry's journey begins in New England with lobstermen in Eastport, Maine. He attends a primary meeting hosted by Mitt Romney and visits the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where he rides a cog railway to the top of Mount Washington. In Vermont he is invited to create his own Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavour. He hunts for deer in the Adirondack Mountains (without a gun), attends a tea party with Harvard University professor Peter Gomes, and meets witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Fry tours a submarine at the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, visits stately homes in Newport, Rhode Island, and moves on to New York City, meeting cabbies, mobsters, and Sting. Next is Atlantic City, where he apprentices as a croupier at the Trump Taj Mahal casino before crossing the Delaware to Maryland and Washington, D.C. to interview Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and a member of the Capitol Steps. He ends the first leg of his journey at the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. | Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. | 12 October 2008 |
2 | Deep South | Fry tries to find out what makes the South so distinctive. He begins this leg of his journey with a visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He then finds the Mason–Dixon line, tours a coal mine in West Virginia, and watches horse trading and bourbon brewing before getting a trim at a barber shop in Kentucky. He then visits a body farm in Tennessee, rides in a hot-air balloon in the Great Smoky Mountains, experiences the Gullah culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry, attends a Southern-style Thanksgiving Dinner, tolerates Miami, mingles with snowbirds, and attends a massive college football game in Alabama. | Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. | 19 October 2008 |
3 | Mississippi | A 2,000-mile (3,200 km) journey up the Mississippi River begins in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, followed by a visit to Morgan Freeman's blues club in Mississippi. He hitches a canoe up the river to Arkansas, visits hoboes in St. Louis, gets to see his brainwave activity at the research department of the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, and after a detour going into a burning building in Indiana and over to Ohio and Detroit, explores Chicago and its place as a center for blues and comedy. He finishes the journey with a sheep's milk cheese farm in Wisconsin and Hmong immigrants and ice fishing in Minnesota. | Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. | 26 October 2008 |
4 | Mountains and Plains | National security becomes a recurring theme as Stephen visits Border patrol agents in Montana, a former missile silo in Kansas, and an INS patrol in El Paso. He also visits Glacier National Park, Ted Turner's Bison ranch, the Continental Divide, the German American community in North Dakota, Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, the Lakota people, a major truck stop on Interstate 80, Aspen and Salvation Army work in Oklahoma. | Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. | 2 November 2008 |
5 | True West | Stephen explores the ancient city of Santa Fe, sees the cutting edge of scientific research in Los Alamos, eats frybread with Navajos in Monument Valley, and hitches a ride with a B-17 Flying Fortress to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. He sees a wild west show in Tucson, takes a houseboat around Lake Powell, takes part in a team-building exercise in Las Vegas, and sees another legacy of the wild west at the Mustang Ranch before arriving at the shores of the Pacific Ocean. | New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. | 9 November 2008 |
6 | Pacific | Stephen begins in San Francisco, exploring its Chinatown and meeting Apple executive Jonathan Ive. He takes a ride with the Mendocino County sheriff, meets students at Humboldt State University, explores the forests of Oregon with activists and Bigfoot believers, and reaches the end of the Contiguous United States at a cabaret in Seattle. In Alaska, Stephen encounters fishermen and Inupiat whalers. Finally he goes to Hawaii, where he swims with sharks, meets a real-life Magnum, P.I., attends an authentic luau and finishes his journey at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. | California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. | 16 November 2008 |
The UK home video version was released by West Park Pictures through Lace Digital Media Sales on 17 November 2008. Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions are two-disc sets, complete and uncut. A two-disc Region 1 version was released in the United States in July 2010. In Australia, it was released by Madman Entertainment on two-disc DVD and Blu-ray on 19 August 2009. [3]
A book to accompany the series, also called Stephen Fry in America ( ISBN 0061456381), was published by HarperCollins in 2008. In it Stephen writes in more detail about some of his adventures, as well as some of the ones not featured in the show.
In May 2008, it was announced that a five-part companion series, More Fry in America, had been commissioned for BBC Four. It was to feature in-depth essays excluded from the first series due to time constraints. [4] No further information about the project has since been released.
A four-part sequel series, Stephen Fry in Central America, was broadcast on ITV in the UK from 27 August to 17 September 2015, following Fry travelling through Mexico and the countries of Central America.
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He first came to prominence as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989–1995) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993). He also starred in the sketch series Alfresco (1983–1984) alongside Laurie, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, and in Blackadder (1986–1989) alongside Rowan Atkinson. Since 2011, he has served as president of the mental health charity Mind.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, known in Japan as just Innocence, is a 2004 Japanese animated cyberpunk film written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. The film serves as a standalone sequel to Oshii's 1995 film Ghost in the Shell and is loosely based on the manga by Masamune Shirow.
QI is a British comedy panel game quiz show for television created and co-produced by John Lloyd. The series currently airs on BBC Two and is presented by Sandi Toksvig. It features permanent panellist Alan Davies and three guest panellists per episode; the panellists are mostly comedians. The series was presented by Stephen Fry from its beginning in 2003 until 2016.
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, known as Street Fighter II Movie in Japan and Australia, is a 1994 anime film adaptation of the Street Fighter II fighting game written by Kenichi Imai, directed by Gisaburō Sugii and animated by Group TAC. The film, originally released in Japan on August 6, 1994, was released theatrically in the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, and was adapted into English in dubbed and subtitled format by Animaze for Manga Entertainment. It was distributed by Toei Company in Japan, while 20th Century Fox also distributed in other countries.
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. A spin-off of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, it aired from 2006 to 2011. The show shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One, and acquiring American financing in its fourth series when it became a co-production of BBC One and Starz. Torchwood is aimed at adults and older teenagers, in contrast to Doctor Who's target audience of both adults and children. As well as science fiction, the show explores a number of themes, including existentialism, LGBTQ+ sexuality, and human corruptibility.
Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.
Wild China is a six-part nature documentary series on the natural history of China, co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and China Central Television (CCTV) and filmed in high-definition (HD). It was screened in the UK on BBC Two from 11 May to 5 June 2008. The English narration was provided by Bernard Hill and the series produced by Phil Chapman for the BBC and Gao Xiaoping for CCTV. The Chinese version was broadcast under the title Beautiful China. In Canada, it was broadcast on CBC as part of the series The Nature of Things narrated by David Suzuki. Wild China was broadcast in Australia on ABC1 and ABC HD each Sunday at 7:30pm from 18 May 2008.
Fruits Basket was adapted into a twenty-six episode anime series by Studio Deen and premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo on July 5 with the final episode airing on December 27, 2001. Based on the twenty-three volume manga series Fruits Basket written by Natsuki Takaya, the series tells the story of Tohru Honda, an orphan girl living in a tent so as not to trouble anyone. After meeting Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure Sohma, she learns thirteen members of the Sohma family are possessed by the animals of the Chinese zodiac legend and cursed to turn into their animal forms if they embrace anyone of the opposite sex or if their bodies are under great stress. The series was directed by Akitaro Daichi. During production of the series, Daichi and Takaya ran into multiple creative differences including the cast, coloring, and storytelling direction, leading Takaya to dislike the adaptation. Funimation aired the series, in dubbed English, on their anime television channel as well as on Colours TV.
Life is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC in association with The Open University. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.
Nature's Great Events is a wildlife documentary series made for BBC television, first shown in the UK on BBC One and BBC HD in February 2009. The series looks at how seasonal changes powered by the sun cause shifting weather patterns and ocean currents, which in turn create the conditions for some of the planet's most spectacular wildlife events. Each episode focuses on the challenges and opportunities these changes present to a few key species.
The fifth series of the British science-fiction television programme Doctor Who was originally broadcast on BBC One in 2010. The series began on 3 April 2010 with "The Eleventh Hour", and ended with "The Big Bang" on 26 June 2010. The series is the first to be led by Steven Moffat, who took over as head writer and executive producer when Russell T Davies ended his involvement in the show after "The End of Time". The series has 13 episodes, six of which were written by Moffat. Piers Wenger and Beth Willis were co-executive producers, and Tracie Simpson and Peter Bennett were producers. Although it is the fifth series since the show's revival in 2005, the series' production code numbers were reset.
Wonders of the Universe is a 2011 television series produced by the BBC, Discovery Channel, and Science Channel, hosted by physicist Professor Brian Cox. Wonders of the Universe was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two from 6 March 2011. The series comprises four episodes, each of which focuses on an aspect of the universe and features a 'wonder' relevant to the theme. It follows on from Cox's 2010 series for the BBC, Wonders of the Solar System. An accompanying book with the same title was also published.
The sixth series of British science fiction television programme Doctor Who was shown in two parts. The first seven episodes were broadcast from April to June 2011, beginning with "The Impossible Astronaut" and ending with mid-series finale "A Good Man Goes to War". The final six episodes aired from August to October, beginning with "Let's Kill Hitler" and ending with "The Wedding of River Song". The main series was preceded by "A Christmas Carol", the 2010 Christmas special. The series was led by head writer and executive producer Steven Moffat, alongside executive producers Beth Willis and Piers Wenger. Sanne Wohlenberg, Marcus Wilson, and Denise Paul served as producers. The series was the sixth to air following the programme's revival in 2005 after the classic era aired between 1963 and 1989, and is the thirty-second season overall.
Red Dwarf X is the tenth series of the British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. It was broadcast on UK television channel Dave between 4 October and 8 November 2012. There are six episodes and it was the first full series of Red Dwarf since 1999.
The 2013 specials of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who are two additional episodes following the programme's seventh series. In addition to the traditional Christmas episode broadcast on 25 December 2013, a feature of the revived series since 2005, there was also a special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the programme broadcast on 23 November 2013, both airing on BBC One.
Hidden Kingdoms is a British documentary television series that was first broadcast on BBC One on 16 January 2014. The three-part series is narrated by Stephen Fry and shows how animals experience the world from their perspective. Animals shown include a chipmunk, dung beetle, Rufous elephant shrew and treeshrew, and Japanese rhinoceros beetle.
Spy in the Wild is a British nature documentary television series, produced by BBC Natural History Unit, John Downer Productions and PBS. The series, which is directed and produced by John Downer, premiered in 2017 with a second series in 2020. The employment of animatronics makes it possible to document interactive behaviour no animal would have shown towards a human filmmaker or in front of a hidden camera.