They’re quite the troupers

The new Bravo series “Long Way Round,” premiering tonight at 10, features the actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, pals since they met on the set of the 1997 movie “The Serpent’s Kiss,” setting out on a motorcycle journey from London to New York the long way, 20,000 miles and 13 countries, over 115 days.

My first reaction to this show was along the lines of Warren Beatty’s prescient question to Madonna in the 1991 documentary “Truth or Dare”: Can’t anyone, particularly actors, do anything anymore without feeling compelled to film themselves doing it? Recently, for instance, Drew Barrymore decided to vote. Hurray for Drew. Only she then took the next logical step, which was to film herself, not exactly voting but preparing to vote. She went to Washington and interviewed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (“Senator, Drew Barrymore to see you about that voting matter”) and also got on then-Democratic presidential candidate retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark’s campaign bus and came away disappointed that Clark didn’t give a direct answer to her question regarding young-voter apathy.

Home in L.A., Drew was practically in tears about the lack of clarity she obtained on the issue. I saw all this on “Oprah.”

So I didn’t plan to have much patience for “Long Way Round,” which is on the same network, Bravo, that delivers actors into my living room playing cards on “Celebrity Poker.” Then I put in the DVD of the first two episodes of “Long Way Round” and was promptly humbled; McGregor, of “Trainspotting” and “Moulin Rouge” fame, and Boorman, the actor son of director John Boorman, turn out to be genuine human beings, with lives beyond the next catering table and Four Seasons junket. They exude an esprit de corps coupled with an undertone of jokey humility.

Similarly, their biking journey, you quickly come to believe, is really about their passion for the open road and motorcycles and, most importantly, an ability to experience life as it comes. “Long Way Round” is not only about a trip but about how to take one. If you are someone who cannot travel without reading 20 reviews and six guidebooks of hotels and restaurants and sights to see in your destination city, I would recommend this series; it just might mellow you out. It might show you that one of the joys of travel is the serenity of movement through distant places. McGregor and Boorman climb onto BMW motorcycles and head east. That’s it.

Well, not exactly it. They’re traversing the longest continuous landmass on earth, venturing through the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, before flying to Alaska and continuing their journey through Canada and the U.S. In the first episode, they take CPR classes, they learn a little Russian, they take hostile environment training, they work out their nothing bodies with a trainer halfheartedly, endearingly.

That first hour gets a little ponderous, the talk of hardship and uncertainty, the snafus with the production, but only just. They’re out on the road in the second episode, Boorman and McGregor with cameras on their bikes and helmets and a production crew that meets them at every border checkpoint.

The boys get detained for 13 hours at the Ukrainian border; once inside the country, they visit sick kids at the UNICEF Chernobyl Children’s Project in Kiev; in Krasny Luch, they get invited to stay the night at the home of an apparent electronics mogul.

Another Brit, Michael Palin, did several adventure travel shows like this one for the BBC, including a tour of the Pacific Rim, called “Full Circle.”

So too are McGregor and Boorman interested in this kind of symmetry. By the second hour of “Long Way Round,” the undeniable romance of a trip like this is in you like a drug. Some of it has to do with the characters, too the movie star McGregor, and his sidekick, Boorman. I hate to say it, but I’m not sure American actors of the same strata would be able to pull off a show like this without coming off as self-conscious. I can only imagine what an American version of “Long Way Round” would be. Ashton Kutcher and the fourth lead from “That ‘70s Show” skateboarding from Ventura to San Diego.

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‘Long Way Round’

Where: Bravo

When: 10-11 tonight

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

Ewan McGregor...self

Charley Boorman...self

Executive producers, David Alexanian, Russ Malkin, Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman. Director of photography, Claudio Von Planta.