Long Way Up

This is Apple TV+'s first attempt at a documentary styled adventure travel show, and they've certainly gone big with it by taking on the Long Way franchise. The show features actor Ewan McGregor and his friend, Charley Boorman, going on a three-month, 13,000-mile motorcycle trip. Filmed in the fall of 2019, they ride through South America, Central America and Mexico, before finishing up in Los Angeles. The first episode starts slowly but held my attention with Ewan's wonderful, down-to-earth personality. I became even more interested when Harley Davidson stepped up with two prototype, electric "adventure bikes" for Ewan and Charley to take with them on their journey. For the bored and stuck at home, the EV aficionado and the lover of motorbike road trips the series holds a lot of promise, as the two venture through the Andes, Central American rainforests and back to California on fully electric motorcycles, demonstrating innovative engineering ingenuity and filling our empty, wanderlusting hearts with the opportunity to accompany them from our sofas while we wait out the pandemic.

Ewan and Charlie are so fun to watch. I used to watch it because I rode motorcycles but it's a good show on its own. If you like travel and reality series and motorcycles and funny banter you will enjoy it. The film crew does a great job of capturing the experience as well.I was going to give it nine stars but I decided to give it 10 because every time I start the series I can't stop watching it so what more can I ask for?

I am six episodes in. The scenery...it's hard to believe some of this is filmed on Planet Earth. At times I am gob smacked. The interactions with locals are beautiful. Ewan is the heart and soul of this series and I mean no disrespect to Charlie who is great. The filming is amazing. I've watched the other two series which are also fantastic. Just makes me want to get of the couch and explore. If you don't like it, that's fine, but is it really necessary for people write such hateful and nasty reviews? Why? Just switch off.

Ewan and Charlie make an entertaining double act and the old production gang comes back together for a new road trip. The most obvious question, though is, "why didn't anyone tell them batteries don't like the cold"?

It seems that it takes them about 2 weeks to work this out. Whoever did the logistics must have been evilly laughing as they seemed to be constantly 10 miles short of powe.

Anyway, I'm about half way in now and in it for the long haul. The scenery is great (the drone pilot was pretty busy and seems to have his/her own battery supply) and the miles soon disappear.

And at least the charging issue gives a bit of jeopardy for the show. Worth a watch.

I must state that my favorites documentaries in order is LWR and LWD. It's a series that actually impacted my life it ended up with north of 800k miles on generations of R1100 and 1200GSes. Simply put my life would have been different. The same impact as Ted Simon had on Charley and Ewan.

I really wanted to love this season, I've been waiting for it, I needed it!

But once I've watched 9/10 of the episodes it never hooked me it's like food without salt. You watch it but you don't crave it. What's missing is the humans the remoteness the struggle and not the least the roughness in the way it's visualized. I cannot connect to this season. I guess it's become.very "Hollywood" and orchestrated. There's to much technology that's get in way of the journey. And this is not the way Ted Simons intended it with ".. the interruptions makes the journey". It feels here that technology gets in the way of the journey, cultures and people. To many cities and hotels. Finally the inner stress in both Charley and Ewan. They do not feel so excited anymore.

I'm sorry I never write these reviews. But this series is too close to my heart.