The Moaning of Life

Last updated

The Moaning of Life
The Moaning of Life publicty shot.JPG
Sky publicity image
Also known asThe Moaning of Life 2
Genre Travel documentary comedy
Presented by Karl Pilkington
ComposerMat Davidson
Country of originEngland
Original languageEnglish
No. of series2
No. of episodes11 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producersCelia Taylor
Richard Yee
Krishnendu Majumdar
Running time44-45 minutes
Production company Sky UK television
Original release
Network Sky 1
Release20 October 2013 (2013-10-20) 
17 November 2015 (2015-11-17)

The Moaning of Life is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky 1. It follows Karl Pilkington around the world as he visits other cultures. [1] Unlike An Idiot Abroad , which had a similar premise, The Moaning of Life sees Pilkington actually choosing to visit other countries in order to see how they face up to some of life's biggest issues with their cultures and customs. He also reassesses his life now that he has reached the age of 40, which he considers to be "middle age". [1] The series has eleven one-hour episodes, and sees Pilkington visiting Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United States. [2] Its original broadcast run in the United Kingdom began on 20 October 2013.

Contents

Sky1 postponed the fifth and final episode of the first season – "Death", which sees Pilkington in the Philippines contemplating death with locals – after Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in early November 2013. [3] Originally scheduled for 17 November 2013, it was not broadcast until 17 December 2013.

The series was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 18 November 2013 in the United Kingdom.

Discovery Communications' Science began broadcasting The Moaning of Life in North America on 18 January 2014. [4] [5] The series aired in Australia from 17 February 2015 on BBC Knowledge. [6]

A six-part second and final series was commissioned and premiered on 13 October 2015. [7]

Series overview

SeriesEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast aired
1 520 October 201317 December 2013
2 613 October 201517 November 2015

Episodes

Series 1 (2013)

No.
overall
No. in
series
TitleDirected byOriginal air dateUK viewers
(millions) [8]
11"Marriage"Richard Yee20 October 2013 (2013-10-20)1.49

Although Karl has been with his girlfriend Suzanne for 20 years, he has never felt a need to marry her. He travels abroad to witness how other cultures handle marriage and see if he is missing something. In India, he explores the concept of an arranged marriage, accompanies "wedding detectives" as they secretly collect information on a man being considered for an arranged marriage on behalf of the family of his potential bride, and assists wedding planners in arranging a wedding with 5,000 guests. He then visits the United States, where he attends a "pheromone party". He is impressed by the concept of a drive-through wedding in Las Vegas because of its speed and convenience. Karl comes up with a unique concept for a couple's wedding and they follow his plan by marrying in a laundromat.

22"Happiness"Benjamin Green27 October 2013 (2013-10-27)1.10

Karl goes abroad to discover how people in other cultures find happiness. In Mexico, he runs with a tribe that finds happiness in ultra-marathons and meets a group of people who find happiness in experiencing pain. He then moves on to the United States to join Tommy the Clown and his group of "hip hop clowns" who dance in the streets. He meets Justin Jedlica, who finds happiness in his appearance and is addicted to plastic surgery. Lastly, he spends a day with Daniel Suelo, who gave up his worldly possessions and finds happiness in a homeless lifestyle.

33"Kids"Richard Yee3 November 2013 (2013-11-03)1.11

Karl sets out to learn why people have children. In Japan, he saves a turtle awaiting its fate as someone's meal at restaurant and keeps it in his hotel room's bathtub. He attends a traditional fertility festival and goes to a doctor to have his sperm tested. He then travels to Indonesia, where he helps at a natural birthing center and babysits an infant girl. At his next stop, Karl spends time with the Bajau people, "sea gypsies" who allow their children to roam freely with little supervision. Finally, he visits the United States, where he hires two adult dwarf actors to pretend to be young children for a young couple who are considering having kids.

44"Vocation & Money"Benjamin Green10 November 2013 (2013-11-10)1.09

Karl travels overseas to explore how people find their vocations. In Japan, he spends time with Dr. NakaMats, an 85-year-old inventor who has Karl try out some activities to boost his brain. Then he tries out the careers of traditional Japanese benriya or odd-job man, including posing in figure drawing and cleaning an apartment where he accidentally pokes a hole in a paper wall. He flies to South Africa, to meet self-made millionaire Kenny Kunene, who shows Karl his extravagant lifestyle including swimming in a pool full of girls, riding in Kenny's new McLaren car, riding in a helicopter over the township, having a butler, browsing at luxury watches, and getting a facial and massage. He learns from Kenny's friend Gayton McKenzie on how to "hustle" or negotiate buying fish and selling it for a profit. He joins Gayton at a club where he is asked to eat sushi off a woman's body. His final stop is in Los Angeles, where Karl meets Project Runway designer Joshua Christensen [9] and tries his hand at being a catwalk model in a Hollywood fashion show.

55"Death"Richard Yee17 December 2013 (2013-12-17)0.68

Karl has never even attended a funeral, but he sets out to see how other cultures handle death. His first stop is a coffin shop in Ghana that specializes in coffins custom-made in any shape the buyer wants. He next helps a mortician prepare the body of Madam Comfort Asaaba Cofie, a 79-year-old woman who had died a month earlier, for her funeral. In Taiwan, Karl trains with a professional mourner and follows them to a funeral parlor. He next goes to the Philippines, where he visits a cemetery that also functions as a small town where people live and work among the dead and assists in the exhumation of a body. His next stop is Sagada, where he helps transport and place a coffin hung on the side of a cliff. Back at home, Karl takes delivery of a custom coffin he ordered himself and his girlfriend in the shape of a Twix wrapper, and then drives to the beach to demonstrate his idea for a new type of memorial along the boardwalk there. Inspired by benches with plaques dedicated to the deceased, Karl procures a memorial rubbish bin in honor of Comfort.

North American broadcasts

In North America, Science premiered the episodes in a different order, as follows: [5] [10]

  • Episode 2, "Happiness", 18 January 2014, 10:00 p.m. EST
  • Episode 3, "Kids", 18 January 2014, 11:00 p.m. EST
  • Episode 1, "Marriage", 25 January 2014, 10:00 p.m. EST
  • Episode 4, "Vocation & Money", 6 February 2014, 7:00 p.m. EST
  • Episode 5, "Death", 6 February 2014, 8:00 p.m. EST

"Vocation & Money" and "Death" originally were scheduled to air at 10:00 p.m. EST on 1 February and 8 February 2014, respectively, but both were rescheduled to 6 February 2014. [5] [10]

At about three-quarters of the way through each North American broadcast, Science aired a brief "never-before-seen clip" from The Moaning of Life featuring Pilkington commenting on an issue during filming of the episode.

Series 2 (2015)

No.
overall
No. in
series
TitleDirected byOriginal air dateUK viewers
(millions) [8]
61"Art"Unknown13 October 2015 (2015-10-13)1.34

Karl delves into art that is 'not just all flowers in vases anymore'. In New York City, he models for a body painter Trina Merry, visits the Museum of Modern Art, and participates in performance art in Times Square. He makes art expeditiously with boxing gloves and transcends dog shit into art with Sprinkle Brigade. In Los Angeles, Karl attempts to create vomit art with Millie Brown, and then he heads back to England to experience his own interpretation of art – a murmuration of starlings.

  • Locations featured: New York City and Los Angeles, United States; Somerset, United Kingdom
72"Identity"Unknown20 October 2015 (2015-10-20)1.05

Karl explores the nature of identity and how hair, apparel, language, and gender play a part. Karl starts by sending his DNA off to be analysed and getting a 'hair prosthetic' installed to cover his baldness. Then Karl travels to Mexico to experience identity tied to unique footwear and a whistled language. Heading back to the States, Karl also tries his hand at celebrity impersonation and embodying a female figure.

83"How to Live Your Life"Unknown27 October 2015 (2015-10-27)0.97

Karl explores different ways of life and delves into the values and priorities others use guide their time on Earth. He spends time with a Buddhist monk, a costumed vigilante, a Mormon fundamentalist polygamist family, a creative philanthropist, an nonagenarian skydiver, and a man who does 'extreme ironing'.

94"The Body"Unknown3 November 2015 (2015-11-03)0.90

On the Langjökull glacier in Iceland, Karl tries exercising in cold weather in just his pants. Next, Karl travels to India to meet a practitioner of Shivambu, or urine therapy, and another man who believes he doesn't need to eat, as he absorbs all the energy he needs from the sun. In Tokyo, Karl tries out some robotic arms, has therapy to reduce the size of his head, and finds out what it's like to be blind. Lastly, back in London, Karl gets his testicles inspected for lumps for the first time.

105"Waste"Unknown10 November 2015 (2015-11-10)0.85

First, Karl travels to Mexico to perform an underwater inspection in raw sewage and meet a man who's recycled plastic bottles into his own island. In the United States, he meets a man who eats roadkill, helps clean up a hoarder's house, and gets inspired by a man who's downsized to the point of living in a skip. Karl ends his trip in Germany, where he joins a group that plays music on trash bins and discarded items.

116"Time"Unknown17 November 2015 (2015-11-17)0.68

Karl starts the episode by having his future told via rumpology. Then he travels around the United States to have his upper body put in casts, get made up to look and feel old, after which he competes against some elderly track and field athletes, and spends time with a man pretending to be a dog. In Germany, he explores the process of plastination to preserve bodies. Back in the US, he examines personal doomsday bunkers and simulates what it would be like to live on Mars, visiting Kellie Gerardi and her research crew at the Mars Desert Research Station.

Home media

Despite the final episode having not yet aired in the United Kingdom due to its postponement, the entire first series was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 18 November 2013. The series was also made available on Amazon.com. An advertisement featuring Pilkington complaining about Amazon.com was released on YouTube to promote the series.

The second series titled The Moaning of Life 2 was released onto DVD and Blu-ray on 23 November 2015. A boxset featuring both series was also released on 23 November 2015 on DVD and Blu-ray.

Books

Related Research Articles

<i>Home and Away</i> Australian television soap opera

Home and Away (H&A) is an Australian television soap opera. It was created by Alan Bateman and commenced broadcast on the Seven Network on 17 January 1988. Bateman came up with the concept of the show during a trip to Kangaroo Point, New South Wales, where he noticed locals were complaining about the construction of a foster home and against the idea of foster children from the city living in the area. The soap opera was initially going to be called Refuge, but the name was changed to the "friendlier" title of Home and Away once production began.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Pilkington</span> English comedian and television personality (born 1972)

Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.

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.

The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy radio show in the United Kingdom starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, later adapted into a podcast and a television series. Although named after Gervais, it came to revolve mostly around the life and ideas of Karl Pilkington. The show started in August 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004 and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. An animated series based on the podcast and adapted for television debuted for HBO in the United States and Channel 4 in the UK in 2010.

<i>Murdoch Mysteries</i> Canadian television series

Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian television drama series that premiered on Citytv on January 20, 2008, and currently airs on CBC. The series is based on characters from the Detective Murdoch novels by Maureen Jennings and stars Yannick Bisson as William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto, Ontario in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The series was titled The Artful Detective on the Ovation cable TV network in the United States, until season twelve.

<i>Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood</i> 2009 anime series directed by Yasuhiro Irie

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a Japanese anime television series adapted from the original Fullmetal Alchemist manga series by Hiromu Arakawa. Produced by Bones, the series is directed by Yasuhiro Irie, written by Hiroshi Ōnogi and composed by Akira Senju. The series was conceived in order to create a faithful adaptation that directly follows the entire storyline of the original manga, after 2003's Fullmetal Alchemist anime series strayed away from it to tell its own story after running out of published manga material to adapt.

<i>An Idiot Abroad</i> 2010 British television travel documentary series

An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky One, as well as a series of companion books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they stay in the United Kingdom and monitor his progress.

<i>The Slap</i> (Australian TV series) 2011 Australian TV drama series

The Slap is an Australian television drama series. It was first broadcast on ABC1 from 6 October to 24 November 2011. The series is based on The Slap, a 2008 novel by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas, which explores what happens when a man slaps a child, who is not related to him, at a suburban barbecue.

<i>Mrs. Browns Boys</i> Television series and sitcom by Brendan OCarroll

Mrs. Brown's Boys is a television series and sitcom created by and starring Brendan O'Carroll and produced in the United Kingdom by BBC and BBC Studios in partnership with BOC-PIX and Irish broadcaster RTÉ. The series stars O'Carroll as Agnes Brown, with several of O'Carroll's close friends and family members making up the rest of the cast. The show adopts an informal production style often breaking the fourth wall; material that would normally be outtakes are intentionally left in broadcast episodes, along with intentional tomfoolery, mostly instigated by O'Carroll.

<i>Métal Hurlant Chronicles</i> 2012 multi-national TV series or program

Métal Hurlant Chronicles is an English-language Franco-Belgian science fiction anthology television series based on the popular comics anthology magazine Métal Hurlant, known in the United States as Heavy Metal. Each episode is a self-contained story taking place on a different planet with a different cast, and the episodes are linked together only by the idea that an asteroid, the "Métal Hurlant", passes the planet in question during the events of the story. The show's premise originated with Guillaume Lubrano, who put together a self-financed pilot to pitch the show, which was broadcast as the series' third episode. Lubrano and Justine Veillot produce the show through their company WE Productions. It was largely filmed in Bucharest, Romania.

<i>Star Trek: The Original Series</i> season 3 Season of television series

The third and final season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek, premiered on NBC on Friday, September 20, 1968 and concluded on Tuesday, June 3, 1969. It consisted of twenty-four episodes. Star Trek: The Original Series is an American science fiction television series produced by Fred Freiberger, and created by Gene Roddenberry, and the original series of the Star Trek franchise. It features William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock and DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy.

<i>The Musketeers</i> British television period drama series (2014–2016)

The Musketeers is a British period action-drama program based on the characters from Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers and co-produced by BBC America and BBC Worldwide. The series follows the musketeers Athos, Aramis, and Porthos as they serve King Louis XIII and citizens of 17th-century Paris. The first episode was shown on BBC One on 19 January 2014. It stars Tom Burke as Athos, Santiago Cabrera as Aramis, Howard Charles as Porthos, Luke Pasqualino as D'Artagnan, Tamla Kari as Constance Bonacieux, Maimie McCoy as Milady de Winter, Ryan Gage as Louis XIII and Alexandra Dowling as Queen Anne. It also features Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu in Series One, Marc Warren as Comte de Rochefort in Series Two, and Rupert Everett as the Marquis de Feron in Series Three.

<i>Hidden Kingdoms</i> 2014 British TV series or programme

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.

<i>Life Story</i> (TV series) 2014 British TV series or programme

Life Story is a British natural-history television series co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery Channel and France Télévisions in association with The Open University. The six-part series, narrated by David Attenborough, reveals the challenges faced by individual animals at different stages of their lives.

<i>Assassination Classroom</i> season 1 Season of television series

Assassination Classroom is an anime series adapted from Yūsei Matsui's manga series of the same name. Produced by Lerche and directed by Seiji Kishi, the first season was broadcast in Japan on Fuji TV from January 9 to June 19, 2015. The series is licensed in North America by Funimation, who simulcast the subtitled version as it aired and streamed an English dub version from February 18, 2015. Adult Swim's Toonami programming block began broadcasting Funimation's English dub of the series on August 30, 2020.

References

  1. 1 2 "About The Show". Sky. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
  2. "There will be five hour-long episodes of the #moaningoflife on Sky1HD from October". Twitter.com. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
  3. "Karl Pilkington's Moaning of Life postponed following Philippines tornado tragedy" . Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  4. "SCIENCE CHANNEL UNVEILS ITS 2013-2014 UPFRONT SLATE FEATURING SCRIPTED DRAMA, LIVE SCIENCE EVENTS AND BLUE CHIP SERIES". Press.discovery.com. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 "Karl Pilkington's Travel Show 'The Moaning Of Life' Will Air On Science Channel In January". CINEMABLEND. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  6. "February: 150+ new and returning shows, movies and sport events". Foxtel. 6 February 2015. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  7. "Karl Pilkington: The Moaning of Life Series 2". Sky Media. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  8. 1 2 "Weekly Top 10 Programmes". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board . Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  9. "Joshua Christensen - Portland Interview Magazine". portlandinterviewmagazine.com. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
  10. 1 2 "The Moaning Of Life". Science Channel. Retrieved 25 December 2014.