An Idiot Abroad is a travel documentary television series broadcast on Sky1, as well as spin-off books published by Canongate Books, created by and featuring Karl Pilkington and his former radio show colleagues Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel and so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they themselves stay in London and monitor his progress.In this second series, Karl performes activities from his "bucket list". Pilkington agreed to do a second series on the condition that he was to choose what he would do and that he got to use proper toilets. To keep the series interesting, Ricky and Stephen went behind Karl's back and arranged surprises for him to make him hate it even more than the first. He ends up visiting more places than he did in the first series, suffering through a number of detours. When asked why he had returned for a second series after being continuously adamant that he was not going to, Pilkington replied "I'm in a programme called "Idiot Abroad"; job offers ain't flyin' in.".
Despite saying that there will not be a third series Gervais will produce a Christmas special which was originally supposed to star Karl and Warwick Davis travel round England on a bike together, this is what Karl agreed to return for. It has now been put into 2 parts, and he has tricked Karl once again as it will now feature them abroad on a bike. As of February 2012 pre-production has started with Karl and Warwick. Gervais has said "We started planning the route for An Idiot Abroad 3: The Short Way Round, this week. It's only a two-part special but we've decided to make it a bit more global as opposed to "around Kent for a few days, Karl is starting to regret it already."