Yes, they bicker. Yes, they do impressions. And, as well as celebrating food, this new series of improvised comedy also explores – brilliantly – masculinity and middle age

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the restaurant – a sudden autumn downpour that spills over the sides of the patio awning and swirls around the table legs at Txoko, a popular bistro overlooking the harbour in the Basque town of Getaria. Diners run for cover, waiters hurry tables, chairs, crockery indoors, and Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon stand in the doorway, continuing their lunchtime conversation about the death of Sir Thomas More and how they would each choose to execute the other. “I like it when people think this is real,” says Brydon, as the rain hammers down. “I would never have such a toxic conversation with a friend.”

Since it began in 2010, The Trip has made unexpectedly devotional viewing. It is a curious premise: Brydon and Coogan play exaggerated versions of themselves – two sometime friends, comedians in middle age, dispatched to review restaurants together. First they headed to the north of England, dining at L’Enclume and the Inn at Whitewell and riffing over Wordsworth and Coleridge, Michael Caine and sticky toffee pudding. Next came an adventure through Italy, from Liguria to Capri, filled with seafood linguine and artichokes, Byron and Shelley and Alanis Morissette. It is a show brimming with impressions, niggles, tenderness, and it has proved not only wonderful television and a celebration of regional food, but also a sumptuous portrait of masculinity.

The new season brings changes: this time the pair are travelling through Spain, and the story is that while Brydon is again providing restaurant reviews for the Observer, Coogan is writing about the experience for the New York Times – as well as working on a Laurie Lee-esque memoir, revisiting the country he first explored as a teenager. And while there is a familiar run of impersonations — Al Pacino and Mick Jagger and David Bowie nestling in among the pintxos, Iberico ham and rioja, there are discussions of Cervantes, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and impassioned renditions of Noel Harrison’s Windmills of Your Mind.

Perhaps the biggest shift, however, is that this time the series will be broadcast on Sky Atlantic rather than the BBC – a decision that was not easily made by the show’s director Michael Winterbottom, and seems now to perplex its stars. “That’s Bake Off, The Voice, The Trip …” Brydon reels off the list of successful shows that have recently made an exodus from the BBC, and later, debating when they should unleash a close-to-the-bone riff about Rolf Harris and Dave Lee Travis he and Coogan have been working on, he nods to it again: “We need some wham-bam moments for episode one, so that the 12,000 people who watch it when it goes out really have something to look forward to.”

When the rain stops, abruptly giving way once more to soft heat and the heavy smell of the harbour, the scene resumes: Coogan and Brydon are re-seated to eat octopus and hake à la plancha and discuss the success of Coogan’s film Philomena – how it “vanquished the competitive streak” he had towards his fellow Brit-comics-turned-Hollywood-stars such as Ricky Gervais, Simon Pegg and Sacha Baron-Cohen. “I am freed from the albatross of jokes and having to make people laugh,” he says. “With Philomena I managed to say something of substance.” Brydon regards him steadily. “May I say something?” he says. “Your octopus is getting cold.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Filming The Trip to Spain at Txoko in Getaria. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Observer

Much of The Trip relies on this dynamic – Coogan the somewhat grandiose figure, taking himself rather seriously; Brydon content with domestic happiness and more neighbourly fame, delivering the occasional levelling dig to Coogan’s ribs. But over the course of three series this too has evolved. In the first instalment, we saw Coogan in the midst of professional success and personal disillusionment, attempting to shake off the shackles of Alan Partridge. In the last season, it was Brydon who was in flux, risking the contentment of his home life for a fleeting romance with a tour guide.

Spanish food, they say, proved less varied than Italian. “There’s no getting away from it, there was a lot of ham and cheese,” Brydon says. “The best food was the tapas bars,” Coogan adds. “This might be a controversial thing to say, but the culinary tastes of working-class people in some of our neighbouring countries seems to be more sophisticated. Or, let me put it another way, the multinational conglomerate conspiracy to shove crap food down people’s throats is less successful in places like Spain and Italy, because not that they seek out fresh food, it’s just that it’s part of the culture, and it hasn’t really changed very much. You might think of a traditional British place, you might think of a greasy spoon maybe, whereas in Italy and Spain you have tapas food which is just really unadulterated by crap. It’s changing in Britain, but it has been for a long time that among working people food has been just sustenance to give the energy to work and get you through the day, and if it tasted nice that was a sort of bonus, wasn’t it?”

The day before they lunch in Getaria, Coogan and Brydon drift slowly into Santander port aboard a passenger ferry and head for the caves at Altamira. The caves are a Unesco world heritage site, an extraordinary example of paleolithic art, closed to the public in 2002 to protect the 15,000-year-old paintings of bison and bulls. For some while Coogan and Brydon stand in the replica cave adjacent to the original, built to safely receive Altamira’s 250,000 visitors a year, and listen to Victor the tour guide as he cranes his neck towards the ceiling and talks of “the group of bison that is the most evolved example of cave art in the world”. Coogan asks if they might be allowed to see the real caves. “Of course,” says Victor. “I’ll take you there!”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brydon and Coogan filming at the Altamira caves, in northern Spain. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Observer

They walk through the mellow afternoon, two men in chinos enjoying the scent of warm grass and eucalyptus trees, the sound of oak leaves crisp underfoot. Across a metal walkway and a wooden bridge they go, until they reach a small door that stands resolutely shut. They cannot go inside, Victor explains: only a handful of people each week, selected by lottery, may enter the real caves, and no appeal by the pair – no claims to fame, nor the sway of Brydon’s large Twitter following – will grant them special access.

It makes for an elegant introduction to this season’s themes: Coogan’s character once again the focus, he is searching for authenticity, hoping to shore up the success of his Oscar-nominated film, to be seen as a writer and an intellectual, seeking purpose and fulfilment. “There’s two things I’m doing,” Coogan says. “One is I’m wanting some stability in my life because I’m getting older – I mean in character,” he clarifies. “In real life I don’t have that anchored family environment but I’m quite happy in work and life – I’m probably more happy than my character is. The other thing is I’m trying desperately to break out of being seen as just being popular entertainment and low-brow. Whereas in reality I’m really happy with having a balance. Put it this way, in The Trip, my character would do Alan Partridge because he has to do Alan Partridge, whereas in real life I do Alan Partridge because I actually quite enjoy it as long as I don’t do it all the time. In The Trip it’s like a desperate lurch in middle age to jump off the cliff and grasp the branch of respectability. It’s almost like I’m desperate for clever Oxbridge types to pat me on the back.”

The caves at Altamira also serve as a gentle reference to the series’ exploration of what is real and what is not. People are confused by the blurring of reality and fiction – an idea they play with, lightly and often, in their frequent celebrity impressions, in the footage shot in the actual restaurant kitchens. But still people wonder, to what extent are Coogan and Brydon acting? Are the personal details true? Are the extras real people or actors?

Brydon has spoken before of how his on-screen fling in season two caused some real-life consternation – his wife, taking their children to school, was surprised by the teacher placing an arm around her and saying: “This must be a very difficult time for you.” Coogan also tells how people will turn up at the Inn at Whitewell and ask if Magda, the receptionist with whom he enjoyed a romantic interlude in season one, still works there. “As if I slept with someone who works at the hotel and there were cameras in the room!” he says, incredulous.

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Early in the new year, some while after I leave them in Spain, I meet Brydon and Coogan again in a photographic studio in west London. They are suited and polished, posing happily with a large Spanish ham and juggling oranges, positioning roses behind their ears like flamenco dancers and ribbing one another with the warmth of friends gladly reunited.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Observer

Brydon has only recently seen the finished version of the series. “There was a ton of stuff that didn’t make it in there at all,” he says sadly. The DLT and Rolf Harris quip, for instance, is nowhere to be seen. “Michael tends to make it all a lot more friendly,” Coogan says. “If there’s anything that’s a bit uncomfortable Michael tends to leave it out. We gave up trying to convince him – he more or less ignores what we say. He just has his own ideas.”

“I’d say it’s an agenda,” says Brydon. “First of all, Rob and I like jokes,” Coogan explains. “And Michael tends to avoid anything that looks like it’s a joke, anything that’s got regular comic structure. Which is basically Rob’s entire thing.”

Brydon laughs exuberantly, like Basil Brush.

“Remember there was all that stuff in the first one,” Coogan continues, “where you said, ‘Why don’t you cut here, because it’s funny …?’”

Though some of the “absurd and spiky” moments that Brydon enjoyed are not in the finished cut, there were, they say, fewer moments of conflict in this series. “Probably because we’ve settled more into who we are a little bit,” Coogan says, and Brydon agrees. “You and I as people get on better than we ever have,” he says. And indeed the ease between them is part of this series’ great charm – moments across the dinner table where Coogan’s attempted air of grandeur is ruined by a burst of laughter at some remark or other made by Brydon.

Since last year, Coogan has been teetotal, and it’s hard not to wonder if this has detracted from the pleasure of making this season of The Trip – as Brydon has merrily sipped away at the finest albarinos and tempranillos, he has stuck resolutely to Diet Coke and water.

“Let me say he’s a much nicer person to be around because he’s not drinking,” Brydon says. “Well,” Coogan says, “I did drugs too, and the thing is between getting – how shall we put it? – ‘off one’s tits’, it’s how you are in the refrain from it. It’s about not liking yourself, and if you like yourself you like other people as well. And when I was drinking … I wouldn’t say I didn’t like myself completely …”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stylist: Hope Lawrie. Rob Brydon: suit, Paul Smith, mrporter.com; shirt and pocket square both Drakes; shoes, Russell & Bromley; grooming, Joe Mills

Steve Coogan: suit, Paul Smith, matchesfashion.com; shirt, Burberry, mrporter.com; shoes, Grenson; grooming, Simon Maynard at Terri Manduca for Matthew David Salon Mayfair Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Observer

“No, you were quite fond of yourself,” Brydon interjects. “From where I was standing you were quite enamoured …” Coogan laughs. “I wouldn’t say enamoured,” he says. “I wouldn’t say I liked myself, I’d say I disapproved of other people more.” Brydon nods. “That’s very true. Very true.” “But now,” Coogan continues, “I am just … happier.” He says the word in a small way. Brydon glances at him. “I don’t like the upward inflection there,” he says sternly. “I’m just happier,” Coogan says again, this time more resoundingly. “Thank you,” Brydon says. “You’re better than that. We are not upward inflectors.”

How do they feel about the move of channels?

“Rob feels fine, I feel awkward,” Coogan says firmly, within ear of the Sky press officer. Brydon laughs. “Because you’re more nuanced?” he asks. “No,” Coogan says, “because I don’t like Rupert Murdoch.” Brydon leans back a little in his chair. “Whereas I … I adore the man. Listen, my thing is, if you’ve signed, it’s a bit disingenuous to then take the …” Coogan cuts him off: “Whereas I think it’s more dishonest to reverentially toe the line of your employer. The thing is, it’s not like we’re doing them a favour. We are providing them with ‘content’.” He picks the word up limply.

The series would have been on the BBC, Brydon explains, but the corporation wasn’t prepared to pay. “Essentially they wanted us to do it for less money than last time,” he says. “It’s a quality thing, and it seems like a very bad precedent to set, for everyone, making every programme, if you say, ‘We can give you the same thing for less money.’ Where does that end?”

Coogan smiles. “I wish more people watched Sky,” he says, more gently. “That’s another thing. But maybe they will when The Trip goes out.” He has, after all, already publicly labelled the show “Last of the Summer Wine for Guardian readers”. “It’s my theory that a lot of people who like The Trip are the very demographic who are resolutely non-Sky subscribers. So I think we might just be a cynical ploy by Sky to get them to adopt the platform. If they manage to do that I’ll be very impressed. But it wouldn’t sway me.”

They will be seen plenty elsewhere in the coming months – Coogan is set to play Stan Laurel opposite John C Reilly as Oliver Hardy. “And I’m about to do a little tour of the UK with my stand-up, and then I’m doing a film about synchronised swimming,” Brydon says. “And then I’m doing another series of Would I Lie to You?”

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with taxi drivers about how good Would I Lie to You? is,” says Coogan. “Conversations that I try to curtail.” They are on familiar territory now and Brydon smiles. “It’s not for you,” he says witheringly. “It’s a bit low-brow for you, and I wouldn’t like to think of you sitting down and watching that.”

They bicker back and forth, the kind of warm volleys that have carried them from the Lake District to Liguria to the Basque country. “I’ve told you about that guy who came to my house to do the gas saying, ‘Oh, that Coogan, he’s in another league!’” Brydon remembers. “I told him, ‘He’s not so good on the panel shows, you’ve got to allow me that.’ And he said, ‘He’s above all that.’ I had to put a pained smile on my face and say, ‘Absolutely. Oh absolutely. The problem is,’ I said, ‘try spending time with him.’”

The Trip to Spain begins at 10pm, Thursday 6 April on Sky Atlantic and Now TV, with every episode available on Sky Box Sets



