The Premise
"Departures" is a Canadian travel doc that ran three seasons (2008–2010) on OLN, now parked on Prime Video. The setup is simple: two childhood friends from Ontario, Scott Wilson and Justin Lukach, quit their jobs to travel the world for a year, then do it again, then do it a third time. Andre Dupuis, the third guy nobody remembers is there, shoots the whole thing. Season one is the "let's see if we can do this" year — Wales, Zambia, Nepal, a lot of long bus rides. No talking heads, no gimmick, no format. Two guys, a camera, a plane ticket.
The Case For
The photography. Dupuis won a Gemini for it and you can see why in the first ten minutes of any episode — this is a travel show shot like a nature doc, wide lenses, patient takes, actual composition. It doesn't look like a GoPro strapped to a backpack. The other thing that works is the friendship. Wilson is the earnest one who wants to feel something. Lukach is drier, more likely to squint at a bowl of something and ask what's in it. They've known each other since they were kids and the show doesn't manufacture drama between them, which is why you keep watching. Nobody's mugging. Nobody's saying "let's do this" to camera. Episodes breathe. A single sunrise gets thirty seconds. Try finding that on anything made after 2015.
The Case Against
It's slow. If you grew up on Anthony Bourdain's fast cuts and voiceover swagger you'll find "Departures" quiet to the point of drift. There's no chef persona, no political thesis, no narrative through-line beyond "we went there and did stuff." Wilson's voiceover can veer into feelings-journal territory, the kind of reflection that sounds better written down than read aloud over a drone shot. The music cues occasionally push a moment they didn't need to push. And the guys are, undeniably, two young white Canadians reacting to the world in real time, which means some episodes have the texture of a really nice gap year.
Who It's For, Who'll Bounce
You'll like this if you liked "Long Way Round," early Bourdain, or the parts of "Our Planet" where nothing happens for a while. It's flu-couch television, jet-lag television, Sunday-afternoon television. You'll bounce if you need a plot, if hosts have to be professionally funny for you to stay, or if a travel show without a food angle feels pointless. Anyone raised on TikTok travel edits will find the pacing borderline hostile.
The Ruling
WORTH IT is the correct sentence because the craft is real and the ambition matches the execution. Nobody involved was trying to launch a lifestyle brand. Dupuis shoots the hell out of every location, the editors trust the footage, and the hosts aren't performing warmth — they actually seem to like each other and the places they're in. There's no lecture here, no big argument about travel or culture or the self. When the show has a thought, it earns it by putting you inside a long quiet shot and letting you arrive there. It doesn't reach for greatness, which is the exact reason it clears the bar most streaming travel content limps under. Put it on. Fall asleep to it. Wake up in Bhutan.
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