Deep South

Stephen Fry was very nearly an American. Just before Stephen was born, his father was offered a job at Princeton University but turned it down. As a result, Stephen was born in NW3 rather than in NJ, New Jersey. In this six-part series he travels, mostly in a London cab, through all 50 states of the country that he could have nearly called home and which has always fascinated him.

Stephen explores what it is that makes the south so distinctive. He joins coal miners deep underground in West Virginia, meets a young man with the state of Kentucky tattooed on his butt, enjoys a delirious session of bluegrass music-making in Tennessee, has an encounter with a bear in the Smokey Mountains, ascends in a balloon above North Carolina, learns the language of slaves in South Carolina, is invited into a Georgian family's Old Plantation house to join their Thanksgiving celebrations (and has an unfortunate encounter with a horse), fails as a dancing escort in Florida and is moved by two very different events in Alabama: a parole board's deliberations and the extraordinary hoopla of a college ball game, complete with air-force jets.