Who is Dark Tourist Host David Farrier?
If you can’t get enough of quirky documentaries on Netflix then you might want to check out Dark Tourist, hosted by New Zealander David Farrier, suggests Caroline Westbrook writing for the UK’s Metro newspaper.
This is a documentary series with a difference – taking in some seriously surprising tourist destinations that you might not consider to be touristy at all, Westbrook writes. And it all comes courtesy of one Farrier, who is the guy visiting all those strange spots. Just who is he and where might you know him from?
Farrier is a journalist and filmmaker best known to date for the bizarre documentary effort Tickled – about the weird world of competitive endurance tickling. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, before being picked up for US release by HBO and Magnolia Pictures. It was released in UK cinemas later that year. Farrier is also a familiar face on TV in New Zealand, having appeared as the entertainment reporter on the late show Nightline as well as appearing on 3 News.
He also co-hosts the podcast The Cryptid Factor – which was born out of his interest in cryptozoology – with comedian Rhys Darby.
In Dark Tourist, among the places on Farrier’s agenda are the nuclear site in Fukushima, a voodoo festival in Benin, a quasi-Olympics in Turkmenistan and Colombia, where he meets with Pablo Escobar’s main assassin.
The Hollywood Reporter’s reviewer Daniel Fienberg described the show as “frequently eye-opening and weird”.
“[Farrier is] extremely droll, a tactic that allows him to outright insult more than a couple of subjects, who simply don’t notice,” Fienberg writes. “He’s also very good at setting himself up as a fool so that he can learn a valuable lesson.
“These eight episodes are a reasonable starter set of vacations you’d never want to go on, tours you’d be too perplexed to take, museums too weird to visit and a few places just enticing enough to make you investigate a booking for your next holiday.”
Original article by Caroline Westbrook, Metro, July 24, 2018.
