Over dinner with friends last week, they told us about a show they’d just finished streaming: Long Way Round, a 2004 docu-series in which Ewan McGregor (yep, that Ewan McGregor) and his best friend circumnavigate the globe on motorcycles.

It is so utterly charming.

Mr. McGregor and his friend, fellow actor Charley Boorman, come across as true teasing, laughing, conniving friends. If you’ve ever traveled extensively with a very close friend, you’ll recognize a lot of the hijinx that ensue. Dave and I have been laughing out loud all along, first at a Russian advisor’s bemused confusion that their travel route included the Road of Bones in Siberia (“we’re talking about a hugely unpopulated area where people were sent as punishment…with the thought that they would never come back…probably because they will never find their way back.”) then through the pratfalls of the trip itself. (Their jabs at how dangerous the US is come across as naively funny — not quite sure what they think is happening up there in North Dakota and Minnesota.)

Through it all, Mr. McGregor and Mr. Boorman are first to admit they are actors with not much experience in ways of long motorcycle travel and/or camping and/or not falling off their bikes. It makes them accessible and charming. I didn’t have any preconception of what Mr. McGregor might be like as a person; I’m happy to say he comes across as a warm, caring, meticulous, rule-abiding, and fairly self-critical theater dork who loves his grandma. Mr. Boorman is the Oscar to Mr. McGregor’s Felix: a slovenly, foul-mouthed, big-hearted man. It makes for a likeable combination.

You can find Long Way Round on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon.