Long Way Home Review: Friendship Forged Across 10,000 Miles

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman step once more into dawn’s uncertain light, trading the glossy promise of electric steeds for the creak and rattle of vintage engines. Their odyssey unfolds like an elegy for youth: 10,000 miles of cracked tarmac stretching north to the Arctic hush and looping back through frost‑tinged woodlands and cobbled Baltic lanes. Stripped of excess, they navigate by a garage‑pinned map and the memory of shared heartbeats, each kick‑start a small rebellion against time’s relentless tick.

In this stripped‑down venture, every stutter of the 1970s Moto Guzzi becomes a meditation on fragility. With each sputter, one senses the quiet insistence of mortality humming beneath the roar of pistons. Yet they smile, reminding us that resilience often blooms from rust. Family farewells—glimpsed in soft, pre‑dawn light—anchor their freedom to home’s tender gravity: a silent question, “Can we ever truly escape our origins?”

Remote fjords rise like spectres, their glassy depths reflecting more than sky. Cultural curiosities—a Danish bar where horses linger at the counter—echo humankind’s strange rituals, as if to say that wonder persists even when certainty falters. Here, camaraderie is both lantern and compass, guiding these two kindred souls through landscapes at once vast and intimate—an open road that feels almost sacred.

Echoes of Asphalt and Ash

Two decades ago, McGregor and Boorman set forth in Long Way Round, their first baptism of petrol and possibility. They traced stitches of highway from London through Siberia to Alaska, then down into North America. In Long Way Down, they folded that map southward to Cape Town. In Long Way Up, electric hum replaced engine growl, racing them from Tierra del Fuego toward Los Angeles. This time, they surrender modernity for palpable weight: aged Moto Guzzis and BMWs from their birth years, relics that shudder with history.

The ghosts of Boorman’s 2019 accident hover behind every kick‑start—the fragile flesh of a man imperfectly mended, craving the raw thrill of imbalance. They consciously strip away the Apple‑sized safety net, retreating to a garage‑pinned map and a skeleton crew. Their aim feels personal: to weave the mechanical with the intimate, to cradle both machine and memory.

Over ten nightly installments on Apple TV+, they set forth in June’s gentle thaw, granting themselves two months under northern skies. Seventeen border crossings trace a great arc of human habitations—villages, capitals, forgotten crossroads.

At stake is nostalgia made literal: they both ride the year of their first breaths. Yet beneath that ritual reverence pulses a hunger for authenticity: the unscripted laughter of locals, the grit of unplanned detours, the stubborn refusal of engines to obey. In this context, their work asks whether true adventure survives our yearning for control.

Cartographies of Uncertainty

Long before the first dawn‑lit mile, McGregor and Boorman crouch over their two‑wheeled relics: a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado, its chrome dulled by decades, and a BMW R75/5 that groans at the slightest prod. In a makeshift workshop, spanners click like distant clock‑ticks—each tightened bolt a fragile pact against entropy. The bikes are coaxed back to life, yet their temperamental kick‑starts whisper of inevitable failure. As they lean over McGregor’s garage‑pinned map, hands tracing chalked arcs, one senses a ritual—a confrontation with chance, as though plotting one’s own vanishing point.

The journey unfolds in five acts of landscapes and lapse. From the heather‑scrawled hills of Perthshire they descend to Newcastle’s soot‑stained ferry terminal, devouring salt‑soaked herring on Dutch shores. In fields near Amsterdam, tulips bow beneath an unpredictable sky while locals vault canals in a sport both absurd and defiant. Each clumsy leap feels like a gesture against gravity’s finality.

In Sweden’s dark pines, the road narrows into a vein of solitude. Finland’s mirror‑flat lakes reflect an indifferent sky; the bikes’ echoes dissolve into the stillness. Norway beckons with fjords carved by ice’s ancient hands, and as they pierce the Arctic Circle, the air bites with existential cold—a reminder that every horizon is finite.

Turning south, the Baltic states emerge like layers of time peeled back: medieval spires in Tallinn, gravel roads threading through Latvian farms, Lithuania’s wind‑battered dunes. Then Germany, where a quiet village hosts Boorman’s kin—family portraits in a half‑ruined church, grief and remembrance flickering in stained glass. In Denmark, a pub’s horses sidle at the bar, their presence both surreal and grounded, a living echo of local lore.

This pilgrimage is punctured by mechanical betrayals—a snapped clutch cable on a mist‑soaked pass, roadside repairs lit by headlamp halos. Boorman, still scarred by old injuries, can no longer swing a leg with impunity; each remount is measured, deliberate. Rain‑slick roads turn treacherous, and the Arctic chill seeps through leather jackets like doubt. Their skeletal support crew becomes a lifeline, yet even these unseen helpers underscore the journey’s precariousness.

The first episode drifts at its own pace—rambling anecdotes, toddler‑lost phone hunts, the weight of preparation laid bare. By episode two, they break free, spurred by salt‑wind and the promise of uncharted detours. The tension between reflective stillness and urgent motion courses through each country’s chapter, suggesting that the road itself is less a route than a question—one they cannot fully answer.

Faces Etched in Motion

Ewan McGregor appears on screen like a living cipher of fame and fragility—his easy smile refracting the weight of celebrity, each playful anecdote a fissure in the polished veneer. He juggles petrol‑stained gloves with toddler‑sized chaos: a lost phone beneath a bench, a Father’s Day card scrawled in crayon. These brief, sunlit domestic interludes tremble at the edge of nostalgia, as though childhood itself were both promise and lament.

Opposite him, Charley Boorman carries an atlas of scars—both flesh and memory. His laughter is measured, a tenor forged in the glow of survival. When he quips about kick‑starting with “wrecked” legs, humor rings through his vulnerability like a bell in fog. Age and risk become philosophical companions; every throttle twist questions whether desire can outweigh mortality.

Their friendship unfolds in half‑spoken truths. A sly reference to Kylie Minogue feels almost ghostly now—an echo from past exuberance. Trust is palpable when they navigate wet curves, each glance a silent agreement that some roads demand absolute faith. Banter flits between them like fireflies, flickering light over deeper currents of care.

Before sunrise, they kiss wives and children goodbye, the quiet gravity of those moments pulsing beneath engine roars. In a remote German village, Boorman traces the contours of his mother’s home and pauses in a crumbling church, where stained glass diffuses grief into shafts of color. These scenes…

Symphony of Grease and Light

The machines themselves feel like relics—each birth‑year Moto Guzzi and BMW bearing the gentle scars of half a century. Their patina whispers of past revolutions, of roads long forgotten. Here, the lustrous promise of the electric steeds in Long Way Up is replaced by raw metal and exposed carburetors, as if the riders have reclaimed their mortality in every sputter and backfire.

Visually, the series oscillates between breath‑taking wide panoramas and intimate close‑ups. A slow‑TV reverie unfolds in prolonged tracking shots, where the horizon stretches into infinity and the riders shrink into the landscape’s vast indifference. Claudio von Planta’s handheld camera occasionally trembles with the same uncertainty one feels at life’s edge, only to lift into drone‑borne revelation above glacier‑carved fjords. Moments of solitude are punctuated by frames that refuse to cut—each lingering shot an invitation to dwell on time’s relentless passage.

Sound here is as tactile as the bikes’ kick‑starts: wind hisses through leathers, engine roars swell like distant thunder, and narration retreats into shadow. When local melodies drift in—a Nordic folk hymn, the braying brass of a marching band—they appear not as adornment but as echoes of collective memory, of rituals that outlast us.

Directors David Alexanian and Russ Malkin favor a lean aesthetic: few faces beyond the riders, a skeletal crew whose silhouettes dissolve into forests and road dust. Even the support trucks become characters—looming guardians that arrive in the nick of peril, yet underscore the journey’s precariousness. There is no charging network here, only the night sky and the mechanics coaxing life back into aging engines. In this interplay of grease and silence, the production itself becomes a meditation on risk, reliance, and the fragile poetry of motion.

Echoes of Time and Tender Ruin

A tremor of nostalgia courses through each slow‑turning wheel, as if the riders chase shadows of their younger selves. In choosing machines born the year they were, McGregor and Boorman cast an elegy for youth’s reckless vigor. Their slower pace invites quiet conversations about what remains when speed fades—moments suspended between gasps of Arctic wind and the memory of centuries‑old roads.

Their friendship stands at a crossroads of loyalty and fragility. Years of shared risks emerge in their eyes: the unspoken question, “Will you still be here?” surfaces when Boorman’s cautious throttle meets McGregor’s unbridled bravado. In mechanical failures, one discerns metaphors for life’s caprice—each stalled engine a reminder that existence can sputter without warning.

Yet beneath risk lies resilience. Boorman’s battered limbs bear witness to survival, and every remount becomes an act of defiance against fate’s design. They greet each breakdown with wry humor, as though laughter itself might wrench them free from uncertainty.

In local customs—far‑leaping over Dutch canals, horses sharing Danish bar stools—they find communion with strangers whose rituals defy routine. Spontaneity blooms when plans collapse, revealing that the true reward lies in the uncharted detours.

Amid all this, nature looms indifferent and sublime. Fjords carve silence into their souls; wind‑scoured plains whisper of forces beyond control. In those vast, unspoiled vistas, the series poses its quiet question: who are we when stripped of artifice, alone with road and sky?

Last Embers of the Open Road

A quiet intimacy defines the series’ greatest triumph: moments of shared laughter at dawn, the honest crackle of aged engines, and the warmth of decades‑deep friendship caught in every frame. There is a nostalgic glow here, as if each mile carries the echo of youthful daring now tempered by time.

Yet shadows drift across the narrative. Pacing slows to a near‑standstill at times, the landscapes—while serene—lack the raw, towering drama of earlier expeditions. Viewers unmoored from motorcycle culture or those seeking relentless momentum may find their attention wandering.

This odyssey speaks most clearly to hearts hungry for human stories etched against changing skies. It will resonate with travel‑show devotees who cherish unscripted discovery, with riders who taste freedom in every twist of the throttle, and with anyone drawn to documentaries that place character above spectacle.

Even as the route contracts and speed yields to reflection, the series insists that adventure endures in shared risk and unguarded moments. It invites us to wonder: can the bond between two travelers, bound by memory and machine, carry us beyond the horizon of our own uncertainty?

Full Credits

Directors: David Alexanian, Russ Malkin

Producers: David Alexanian, Charley Boorman, Russ Malkin, Ewan McGregor

Executive Producers: David Alexanian, Charley Boorman, Russ Malkin, Ewan McGregor

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman

Composer: Charlie Jefferson