In the world of lifestyle television, few people get as much attention as Anthony Bourdain, and it’s fair to ask why a middle-aged former chef whose TV show draws fewer than 500,000 viewers deserves so much ink. (Figuratively speaking.)

There are the obvious biographical and cosmetic reasons: the striking looks with an Old World cast and the juicy back story involving walk-in freezers and lots of drugs. His artful profanity and public put-downs of other culinary celebrities don’t hurt.

All of those things contribute to his persona, but they don’t fully explain the appeal of his globe-trotting travel and food show, “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” which begins its final run of episodes on the Travel Channel on Monday night.

The channel is billing these as the ninth season of “No Reservations,” but they’re actually the last seven episodes of Season 8, which was suspended shortly after Mr. Bourdain’s announcement in May that he would be leaving to do a new show for CNN. Split off and repackaged as “The Final Tour” to capitalize on the publicity surrounding his departure, they coincidentally include some destinations — Emilia-Romagna, Burgundy, Brooklyn — that should play to his strengths. For the truth is that despite the fans he might win by eating a live cobra or calling Sandra Lee “pure evil,” Mr. Bourdain and his show are better the more serious and, to use a word he might wince at, sincere they are.