Netflix’s Travels With My Father has a stealthy gooey centre

You come for the laughs and the wicked sense of humour, but this beloved Netflix series imparts a great deal more.

After five years of globetrotting adventures, English comedian Jack Whitehall and his father, former theatre producer Michael, are going on one last journey.

And it will marked by the same dynamic fans have come to know and love of the Travels With My Father series – that of the man-child adult son provoking his disapproving and conservative father, but underneath the bickering and laughs is a gooey and sentimental centre.

Perhaps due to covid restrictions or perhaps due to Michael’s age – he’s now 81 – the two have eschewed far-flung destination and kept to the UK, traversing a path from London to Edinburgh through Devon, Wales and the Lakes District.

Among the Whitehalls’ encounters are Winston Churchill’s bathroom, a llama named Dopey and a ball-shrinking experience in a near-freezing lake.

The final season of Travels With My Father is streaming now. Picture: Netflix

The activities themselves are not super exciting – the kind of things you’ve seen on Escape to the Country a gazillion times – but the point of Travels With My Father was never about the travel aspect, as jolly as it was to see them hang out with Sydney’s drag queens.

Travels With My Father has always been about the relationship between Jack and Michael, exploiting the odd couple formula that was anchored so many TV shows and movies in the past 120 years. That they’re father and son with seemingly opposite personalities just added to the appeal.

But you’ve always suspected that there’s a performative aspect to both of their onscreen personas. Would Jack really eat snacks with his feet in a cramped car if the camera wasn’t there? Or would Michael really refuse to take off his blazer while kayaking? And after five seasons, you can see the seams of where some scenarios were set up.

You often catch a wry smile on Michael’s face reacting to Jack’s buffoonery, one he wasn’t quick enough to suppress as he tried to readjust his countenance to his censorious glare.

This is a father who is clearly proud of his son, despite Jack’s love for shorts, slapstick comedy and goading his dad into things he would never consider, like a backpackers’ hotel or street food. Or maybe because of it.

That they’re both likely putting on a show doesn’t really matter, Travels With My Father isn’t a documentary. The poignancy and love threaded through the series feels authentic, even if the whole endeavour is dressed up as a bit of a lark.

Michael Whitehall is game for a lot more than he professes. Picture: Netflix

A final scene – teased in the trailers – at the top of Edinburgh Castle where Jack and Michael acknowledge the end of Travels With My Father but not their personal journeys together. It’s enough to make you misty.

It’s a stealthy series in that way. Come for the laughs and the wicked sense of humour, stay for the emotional moments – and British ones, not the effusive American type. Because you don’t have to throw your arms around other sobbing to have a real connection with a parent, it can be in the small moments.

It provides a template for anyone who thinks they have a parent that’s so different to them they couldn’t possibly share any genetic material, because it’s often the differences that make for the richest relationships.

Relationships we’re born into aren’t automatically fulfilling and the bonds aren’t unbreakable. If Travels With My Father has taught us anything, it’s that making the effort can have tremendous pay offs.

Travels With My Father is streaming now on Netflix

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Originally published as Netflix’s Travels With My Father has a stealthy gooey centre