Travel Industry News
Not your standard travel programme
Tuesday, 27, April 2010
Rejected by TVNZ, a quirky Kiwi-made series has gone on to become a hit worldwide. Joanna Davis reports on a travel documentary series that could be televisual cousins with Flight of the Conchords - Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey.Getting ripped off, conned and lost, and dealing with beggars and bedbugs - this is travel as thousands of New Zealand backpackers know it.And just what Kiwis Julian Hanton and Camilla Andersen sought to portray when the film-school buddies teamed up to make a tour of the globe's cheapest destinations - places such as India, Thailand, Mexico, Jamaica and Poland.
Back in 2003 the pair, who had attended Auckland's South Seas film school together in 1998, decided to self- fund their first travel series, knowing the idea might sound risky to broadcasters.Twelve countries, 11 episodes and nine months on $100 a week later, the show is certainly not your standard sanitised sparkling-seas-and-five-star- hotel travel programme fare.Finally, this year, after an epic journey of its own involving local rejection, international distribution and championing by a United Kingdom- based television network, Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey will get a primetime slot back home in New Zealand.
