I've been to England before, but I've barely left the cities -- I've certainly never seen any of the sights Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane takes in during this delightfully wacky travelogue, as he drives his vintage Jaguar convertible from London to his hometown of Glasgow -- and all on the back roads. No motorways, no traffic jams, no fast-food pitstops, just rolling green hills and charming villages and eccentric locals and the kind of inexpressibly wonderful spirit that makes you understand why the Sceptred Isle is so fabled a land. Coltrane doesn't make the trip all in one day, of course: he takes his time meandering along the 400 miles, and the things he sees and the people he meets along the way ... well, this is a Britain that probably even a lot of Brits haven't seen.

In this three-part "reality" show -- which aired on Britain's ITV as Robbie Coltrane: B-Road Britain, but appears for the first time in the U.S. on DVD thanks to Acorn Media -- Coltrane visits some bizarre local festivals, meets a weird vicar, stops by a town where they weigh the mayor every year to ensure he or she isn't getting fat off the people, watches the cooling towers of an obsolete nuclear power plant get demolished, plays tiddlywinks at Cambridge University, discovers the weirdest attraction in Shakespeare Country (you'll never guess what it is), uncovers the strange things they do with cheese in the village of Stilton, stops for a drink at an old pub with a storied past (or a very inventive PR flack), makes pudding, makes curry, rolls his eyes at historians who start off tales with "In 1753...," and gets to blow stuff up. Literally.

But it's not just the sights that make Incredible Britain so captivating: it's Coltrane himself as our tour guide. His real personality is somewhere in between the gruff, antisocial cynicism of his police psychologist Fitz in Cracker and the doofus-y charisma of his giant gardener Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. Coltrane is wildly enthusiastic, self-deprecating about his own celebrity, and simply a joy to travel with.

My next trip to England -- the first in more than a decade -- this coming fall is going to be a driving trip, and now I'm looking forward to it even more than I was, because I've got a bunch of new additions to my list of places to see. I'll have to make do without Coltrane, of course -- and probably without a vintage Jag, too -- but I think I'll manage.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
film reviews and TV blogging at FlickFilosopher.com

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