Friendly Fuzzy Poop & Scary Tourists

They are completely unrelated! And then again …

So! In between pretending to be an artist and writer, I watch stuff on streaming platforms such as Netflix, PBS, Prime and Disney+.

Most recently: HACK YOUR HEALTH, the Secrets of your Gut (HYH) and THE TOURIST. Both are on Netflix (but I can’t be sure that they’re accessible outside the US).

HYH is a mildly hilarious expedition into the Digestive System. The expedition leader is a sweet-faced young woman called Giulia Enders who, with her sister Jill, wrote a hugely popular little book called GUT: the Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ. It’s a really good book. It’s easy reading but full of (haha) fibre and leaves the reader feeling as if their minds have just enjoyed a delightfully thorough herbal “cleanse”.

This movie version is less successful in my opinion: not enough hard data, too many talking heads, everyone smiling just a little too much.

Having read the book some years ago, I already understood the main point that Enders makes, ie, the digestive system is not really our own. Instead it is a consortium of micro-organisms that must be kept well-fed and healthy. Until we can understand that we’re feeding them, not ourselves, we will never really “get it”. We will end up being the constipated, bloated, sad, lonely, acne-scarred and secretly toilet-obsessed losers that many of us are. Oh me oh my.

HOWEVER: there are some really delightful clips of stop-motion animation of crazy-cute fuzzy characters representing gut bacteria, food and yes, even – or maybe I should say especially – poop. The lowly dung-bundle is practically the star of the whole show. We even get to see a liquidiser jar with a giant turd (… sorry! Once you watch this movie, it will be completely normal to mention such items in polite company) sitting inside it. It is waiting to be turned into a mush that will be filled into neat little capsules. One young woman with extreme health problems will swallow those capsules, filled with poop-mush from her brother and also (later on) her boyfriend, as part of a medically accepted therapy known as Fecal Microbial Transplantation (FMT – there are various other names for the same therapy).

This is potentially so very gross that … umm … well! It isn’t. But only because I’ve seen the film and no longer think so. And even then … umm. Okay. Let’s leave it there.

One of Giulia Enders’ aims is to get all of us to understand that in order to truly know ourselves, we need to bring “ze butt-hole” – she says it so charmingly that I will forever now think of that organ as having a faint German accent – into the centre of our consciousness. It’s funny and also very sweet and also very true.

It’s worth watching the film just to experience Enders saying “butt-hole” while smiling in a friendly and encouraging way.

Butt-holes forever! And also cute-fuzzy microbes.

THE TOURIST is very, very different. Butt-holes are never mentioned! Which is a shame. Now that I know so much about their centrality in human affairs, it’s hard not to wonder whether the entire narrative might have been different if …

Okay, never mind.

Much of the action in Season 1 takes place in Australia but there are surprising excursions to other places – Greece, for instance. HongKong (well, really only a hotel). Even a quick glimpse of Jaipur, India – and there’s also a heady mix of ethnicities, accents and body-types.

The main character is a nice-looking chap with an Irish accent. He looks rather a lot like the killer in The Fall – oh wait! He IS the same guy! Jamie Dornan. (and also that other movie that I disliked so much, even though I never so much as watched the trailer or read the book, that I refuse to write its name here)

He’s looking older, more weathered, more hurt in the eyes but still rather fetching. Better actually. In this series, though his go-to expression continues to be brooding-with-a-side-order-of-bewildered, he’s more relaxed. Not that he smiles or anything! Nah. He’s too busy being chased, bashed up, chased again, terrified, bashed up, getting some jollies, then back to being chased, bashed up and terrified.

The story starts out super simple: youngish man, driving along the endless highways of Australia, is suddenly attacked and when he wakes up from a near-fatal car crash, in a small-town hospital, he has no idea who he is, what his name is, what his history is, nothing.

There are six episodes in Season 1. The narrative becomes increasingly knotted with backstories. Ever more colourful “types” wriggle their way into the tale: faded overweight blonde, her extremely annoying plus-sized boyfriend, a gnarled old fellah, a vicious big-bellied cowboy, a dusky-skinned lady with too many passports – on and on and ON.

Mysteries abound. Much suspense. Occasional beer. Multiple villains, demented Greeks and OMIGOSH a bit of psychedelia out in the outback!! At least one kangaroo, dust storms, torrential rain, helicopters.

And yet? There’s something vaguely comedic also running along just underneath all that dust and panic. There’s a great deal of violence but no real gore. Some of the dialogue is hilarious.

I’m enjoying it to the hilt (there are a lot of those) and before I even knew it, Season 2 began with a whole new crew of villains, a whole different country, even more specialty accents, chases, bashings-up, yet more mysteries …

Totally enjoyable. And not a butt-hole in sight.