Filmed in 2019, the artist’s US travelogue risks feeling outdated. However its theme of racial unrest is more relevant than ever – as is Perry’s emphasis on listening
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 only poured rocket fuel on the UK’s seemingly unquenchable fascination with how American society functions – or doesn’t. Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip (Channel 4) marks the latest attempt by a travelling Brit to unravel and understand some of the nation’s starkest problems and divisions. “We’re interested in a hopeful story about the American dream,” he says to one of the men he meets here, a brief but telling summary of how he first approached the trip. But Perry filmed the series in the summer of 2019, to air before this year’s looming election. He may not have reckoned with the whiplash speed of an apocalyptic news cycle: much of what has happened since already makes this feel like a relic of a different era.
On a motorbike built especially for the series, Perry rides across the country in the trademark brightly coloured leathers that mark him out as an eccentric and an outsider. This is a useful tactic for explorers in his position. It reveals him as an observer from the off, a merely curious presence with no skin in the game. He does not bother with the faux-naivety of someone like Louis Theroux, say, preferring a more directly cerebral approach. In this first episode of three, he rides around the south, focusing mainly on Atlanta, with a brief detour to Washington DC.
