AniPlus: food and travel documentaries, from Good Eats, Chef's Table and Street Food to Michael Palin, Simon Reeve, Great Continental Railway Journeys and The Endless Summer, and where to watch them

How AniPlus looks

AniPlus takes its look from the Persian anime site whose name it shares, a bright, friendly design built with clean white cards on a pale page. At the top sits the AniPlus logo, a golden straw hat above hand-drawn golden lettering, and at the other side a small round button, an orange My List button and a white Help button. Below them, a white header card with a soft shadow holds the menu links in grey and a search box with a small orange button.

Every section of the home page opens with its title in white on an orange tab that sits on a thin orange line running across the page, with an orange See all button at the far end. Beneath come rows of posters, each in a white rounded card with a soft shadow. A small green badge in the top corner shows that a series is still running, or a pink one that it is complete, an orange badge in the other corner shows the language, and the title sits in white on a dark strip across the foot of the poster. Under the poster, a small line shows the rating, the number of votes, the episode count or running time in orange and the year in a little orange pill.

In the middle of the page, a row of white guide cards, each with a wide picture, an orange Guides tag, a bold title, a short description and an outline button, leads to the help pages, just as the original site showed its latest blog posts. A white text box introduces the catalogue at the top, this guide sits in another white box near the bottom, and a white footer with an about paragraph, quick links and grey buttons closes the page above a bright blue copyright bar. The original site reads from right to left in Persian; AniPlus keeps every piece of the design and lays it out from left to right for English.

Using the site

There are several ways into the catalogue. The search box in the header card finds any title as you type: try Palin, pizza, railway or sushi. The menu links open the whole catalogue, the series, the films, the food journeys and the travel hosts, and the See all buttons open each shelf in full. On a phone, the menu folds behind a button and the posters arrange themselves in rows of three or two.

Every title page shows the poster, the story, the year, the running time or the full list of seasons and episodes, the hosts and narrators where TMDB lists them, and the studio or broadcaster. For series, every episode is listed in order with its number and the date it first aired, so you can follow a long journey one stop at a time. The Watch now button sits near the top of every page, and Add to My List keeps the title in your browser for later.

Home cooking shows

Cooking has been on television almost as long as television itself, and the Home cooking shelf gathers 15 series that teach as much as they entertain. Good Eats, which began in 1999, is a favourite of food lovers and science teachers alike: the host Alton Brown explains the chemistry and physics behind every recipe with puppets, props and plenty of jokes, so viewers learn why bread rises, why meat browns and why a cake sinks. America's Test Kitchen From Cook's Illustrated, on public television since 2001, tests recipes and equipment over and over until it finds the most reliable way to make a dish, and Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Television takes its founder around the world in search of simpler, bolder home cooking.

Some cooks are loved for their warmth as much as their recipes. Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa has been showing viewers how to cook elegant, relaxed food for friends since 2002, and Nigella Lawson's Nigella Bites turned late-night cooking into an art. Jamie Oliver cooks with vegetables and herbs from his own garden in Jamie at Home, and in Jamie's School Dinners he set out to improve the lunches served in British schools, a campaign that changed school menus across the country.

Dave Myers and Si King, the Hairy Bikers, combine cooking with travel on two wheels in The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook and share their favourite dishes in The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food. Hemsley + Hemsley: Healthy and Delicious cooks bright, wholesome recipes, and Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels follows the popular television cook on trips in search of great food at reasonable prices.

Cooking as an experiment

For curious minds, a few series treat the kitchen as a laboratory. Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection follows the chef behind the famous Fat Duck restaurant as he uses science to create the perfect version of classic dishes, from spaghetti bolognese to black forest gateau, and Heston's Feasts recreates extraordinary historical banquets with a twist. Gourmet Makes, in which the pastry chef Claire Saffitz tries to recreate famous snacks and sweets from scratch, and It's Alive! With Brad, in which the cook Brad Leone experiments with fermentation, became favourites of a new generation of online viewers.

These series are a wonderful way to introduce children to science. Making bread, yoghurt or a perfect chocolate chip cookie after watching an episode turns the kitchen into a classroom, and the explanations stay in the memory much longer than a textbook.

A short history of cooking on television

The first television cooks appeared in Britain and America in the late forties and fifties, but it was Julia Child who made cooking shows a national passion. Her series The French Chef began in 1963, and her warmth, humour and fearlessness in front of the camera inspired millions of home cooks. Julia, a documentary from 2021, tells her story with archive film, interviews and mouth-watering food photography, and it is a perfect starting point for any family interested in the history of food on screen.

Later decades brought cooks of every style: scientists like Alton Brown, home entertainers like Ina Garten, campaigners like Jamie Oliver and travellers like the Hairy Bikers. Today, cooking shows are filmed in home kitchens, test kitchens, street markets and the finest restaurants in the world, and the catalogue on AniPlus follows all of them.

Chef's Table and the great chefs

The Chefs and restaurants shelf holds 26 titles about the people who cook for a living. Chef's Table, created by the filmmaker David Gelb in 2015, changed the look of food television with its slow-motion photography, classical music and intimate portraits of chefs around the world, each episode telling the life story of a single cook. Its spin-offs Chef's Table: France, Chef's Table: BBQ, Chef's Table: Pizza, Chef's Table: Noodles and Chef's Table: Legends, which celebrates Jamie Oliver, José Andrés, Alice Waters and Thomas Keller, follow the same beautiful style.

Before Chef's Table, David Gelb made Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the 2011 film about Jiro Ono, the master of a tiny sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station, still working in his eighties and still searching for perfection. It is one of the most celebrated food films ever made, and a quiet, moving portrait of dedication, family and craft that suits viewers of every age.

The Mind of a Chef, narrated by Anthony Bourdain, spends a season each with chefs such as David Chang and Sean Brock, exploring how they think about food, and The Chef Show follows the filmmaker Jon Favreau and the chef Roy Choi as they cook with friends, from food-truck tacos to elaborate desserts. Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars and Being Gordon Ramsay go behind the scenes of restaurants competing for the highest honours in the business.

Masters of their craft

Several films follow cooks as they pursue the very top of their profession. Kings of Pastry, made by the documentary pioneers D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, follows pastry chefs competing for the title of Best Craftsman in France, a three-day test of sugar sculptures and delicate cakes. Merci Bocuse follows a young team preparing for the Bocuse d'Or, one of the most prestigious cooking competitions in the world, and Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros, a four-hour film by Frederick Wiseman, spends a year with a family that has run a three-star restaurant in France for four generations.

Noma: My Perfect Storm tells the story of René Redzepi, whose restaurant in Copenhagen was voted the best in the world, and Ants on a Shrimp follows his team as they move the whole restaurant to Tokyo and create a new menu from Japanese ingredients. King Georges follows the French chef Georges Perrier in Philadelphia, and Chef Flynn tells the story of Flynn McGarry, who turned his family's living room into a supper club when he was ten years old.

Restaurants with stories

Some of the warmest films on AniPlus are about restaurants and the communities they serve. The Automat tells the story of Horn and Hardart, the chain of coin-operated restaurants that fed generations of Americans, with the comedian Mel Brooks among its many fans. Deli Man follows Ziggy Gruber, a third-generation delicatessen owner in Houston, and the history of the Jewish deli in America, and Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's remembers a Hollywood restaurant that served film stars and presidents for sixty years.

Spinning Plates follows three very different restaurants, from a celebrated dining room in Chicago to a family restaurant in a small Iowa town, and A Tale of Two Kitchens visits a restaurant in Mexico City and its sister in San Francisco. Theatre of Life follows the Italian chef Massimo Bottura as he invites great chefs to cook for people in need in a Milan soup kitchen, using food that would otherwise be thrown away, and Pressure Cooker follows a dedicated teacher preparing young cooks from a Philadelphia high school for culinary scholarships. These are uplifting stories about generosity, ambition and the role of food in bringing people together.

Food journeys

The Food journeys shelf, with 38 titles, travels the world in search of great cooking. Street Food: Asia, Street Food: Latin America and Street Food: USA, from the makers of Chef's Table, celebrate the cooks behind famous street stalls, from Bangkok and Osaka to Oaxaca and New Orleans, telling their life stories as well as their recipes. Salt Fat Acid Heat, presented by the chef and writer Samin Nosrat, visits Italy, Japan, Mexico and California to explain the four elements of good cooking, and Cooked, based on the book by Michael Pollan, explores cooking through fire, water, air and earth.

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted follows the famous chef into remote corners of the world to learn from local cooks before preparing a feast of his own, and Tucci in Italy sends the actor Stanley Tucci across Italy in search of regional dishes. I'll Have What Phil's Having follows the television writer Phil Rosenthal on joyful eating trips around the world, where every meal becomes a celebration.

Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico explores the regional cooking of Mexico, Rick Stein's India and Rick Stein's Spain follow the much-loved British seafood chef, and Paul Hollywood Eats... follows the baker on road trips through Japan and beyond. Omnivore travels from salt flats in Peru to coffee forests in Rwanda to celebrate the ingredients that built societies, and Joanna Lumley's Spice Trail Adventure follows the actress along the ancient routes of the spice trade.

The stories behind our food

Some of the most entertaining films in the catalogue tell the life story of a single food. The Search for General Tso sets out to discover who invented General Tso's chicken, the most famous dish in Chinese restaurants across America, and finds a story of immigration and invention. Sriracha tells the story of the famous chilli sauce and the man who created it, Hamburger America travels the United States in search of the most interesting burgers and the people who make them, and Sandwiches That You Will Like is a cheerful tour of America's favourite regional sandwiches.

Inside the Factory goes behind the scenes of enormous factories to show how everyday foods such as bread, chocolate and cornflakes are made, and Food Unwrapped travels the world to answer viewers' questions about the food on their plates. The History of Food tells the story of eating from the first hunter-gatherers to the seed banks of the future, and The Supersizers..., with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins, dresses up and eats like people from the past, from the Victorians to the seventies, with very funny results.

Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People meets the growers and chilli lovers chasing ever-hotter peppers, The Pizza Show travels the world in search of great pizza, Bizarre Foods America follows Andrew Zimmern as he tastes unusual regional specialities, and Roadfood: Discovering America One Dish at a Time and Fresh, Fried & Crispy celebrate small diners and local favourites. Cuban Food Stories, Food on the Go, Eating Alabama and Ingredients look at how families, farmers and cooks keep food traditions alive, and Italianamerican, a short film by Martin Scorsese, lets his parents tell the story of their family and share their recipe for tomato sauce.

Michael Palin

Michael Palin, the former member of Monty Python, is perhaps the best-loved travel presenter of all time, and the Michael Palin shelf holds eight of his journeys. It all began with Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days in 1989: setting out to repeat the journey of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by land and sea alone, he travelled by train, ship and dhow and arrived back in London just in time, with his good humour and curiosity making the series a sensation.

Full Circle with Michael Palin follows him around the rim of the Pacific Ocean through eighteen countries, and Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure retraces the travels of the writer Ernest Hemingway. Sahara with Michael Palin crosses the great desert, Himalaya with Michael Palin travels through the highest mountains on Earth, Michael Palin's New Europe explores the countries of central and eastern Europe, and Brazil with Michael Palin takes him to South America's largest country. In Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime, he looks back at his first journeys using his own diaries and recordings.

Palin's series are perfect for families: warm, funny and full of respect for the people he meets, with plenty of moments where the presenter gamely tries a new food, a new dance or a new way of travelling. They are also a wonderful record of how the world has changed over more than thirty years.

Simon Reeve

Simon Reeve has travelled to more than a hundred countries for his series, often to places few presenters visit, and the Simon Reeve shelf holds ten of them. Tropic of Cancer follows the line of latitude around the world, from Mexico and the Bahamas across Africa, Arabia and Asia, and Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve travels around the coasts of the ocean from South Africa to Australia. Sacred Rivers with Simon Reeve follows the Nile, the Ganges and the Yangtze, three rivers that have shaped entire civilisations.

His country journeys, Australia with Simon Reeve, Ireland with Simon Reeve, Greece with Simon Reeve, Turkey with Simon Reeve and Simon Reeve's South America, combine spectacular landscapes with the stories of the people who live there, and Wilderness with Simon Reeve heads for some of the most remote places on Earth. Incredible Journeys with Simon Reeve looks back at his favourite trips over a long career. His curiosity and kindness make these series a fine introduction to the wider world for older children and teenagers.

Railway and river journeys

Travelling by train and by boat is a slower, gentler way to see the world, and the Railway and river journeys shelf gathers ten titles. Great Continental Railway Journeys follows the former politician Michael Portillo across Europe, guided by an old railway handbook from before the First World War, and his colourful jackets and enthusiasm have become famous. Great Alaskan Railroad Journeys takes him to the far north with a guidebook from 1899, and David Suchet on the Orient Express follows the actor famous for playing Hercule Poirot aboard the most famous train of all.

Wara rides a Bolivian train across the high plains of South America, and the river journeys include World's Most Scenic River Journeys, narrated by Bill Nighy, The Mekong River with Sue Perkins, The Ganges with Sue Perkins and Mystery of the Nile, a giant-screen film that follows the first expedition to travel the whole length of the Blue Nile from its source to the sea.

Walks and expeditions

Some travellers prefer to go the long way round, and the Walks and expeditions shelf holds 28 titles of adventure. The explorer Levison Wood walked the entire length of the Nile in nine months for Walking the Nile, then crossed the Himalayas from Afghanistan to Bhutan in Walking the Himalayas and trekked from Mexico to Colombia in Walking the Americas; From Russia to Iran: Crossing Wild Frontier continues his journeys through the Caucasus. His series show how much there is to learn by moving slowly and meeting people along the way.

The motorcycle traveller Charley Boorman journeys across continents using every kind of transport in Charley Boorman: Ireland to Sydney by Any Means and Charley Boorman: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means, and rides his motorbike to the edges of countries in Charley Boorman's Extreme Frontiers and Charley Boorman's USA Adventure. The comedians Dara Ó Briain and Ed Byrne drive the Pan-American Highway in Dara and Ed's Great Big Adventure and travel from Vietnam to Myanmar in Dara & Ed's Road to Mandalay, with plenty of jokes along the way.

On the water, The Endless Summer, made in 1966 by Bruce Brown, follows two young surfers around the world in search of the perfect wave, and it remains one of the most joyful travel films ever made. The River Runner follows the kayaker Scott Lindgren as he attempts to paddle four great rivers flowing from a sacred mountain in Tibet, and Women & the Wind follows a sailing crew across the North Atlantic. 40 Days at Base Camp spends a climbing season at the foot of Everest, and Given follows a young family travelling the world in search of adventure and wisdom.

History meets exploration in In the Footsteps of Marco Polo, in which two friends retrace the Venetian traveller's route to China, The Pacific: In The Wake of Captain Cook, in which the actor Sam Neill follows the great navigator's voyages, and Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin, in which the explorer uses laser scanning to find ancient cities hidden under forests and deserts.

Travel hosts

The Travel hosts shelf gathers 36 series led by comedians, actors and presenters who make wonderful company on the road. An Idiot Abroad sends the reluctant traveller Karl Pilkington to see the wonders of the world, and his grumpy, deadpan reactions to everything from the Great Wall of China to the pyramids made it a hit. Travel Man: 48 Hours in... follows Richard Ayoade, and later Joe Lycett, with a famous friend on short city breaks, and The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan and Asian Provocateur follow the comedian to places far beyond his comfort zone, including his parents' homeland of Sri Lanka.

Stephen Fry in America follows the writer and actor in a London taxi on a journey through all fifty American states, and Stephen Fry in Central America continues south through the isthmus toward Panama. Joanna Lumley's Japan and Joanna Lumley's India follow the actress across two countries she loves, the second of them the land of her birth, and Martin Clunes: Islands of Australia, Martin Clunes: Islands of America and Martin Clunes: Islands of the Pacific follow the actor to islands large and small.

Paul Merton in China, Bill Bailey's Australian Adventure, Miriam’s Big American Adventure and The Real Man's Road Trip: Sean & Jon Go West bring more comedians on the road, while Susan Calman's Grand Day Out, Susan Calman's Summer By the Sea, Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig and Robson Green's Weekend Escapes explore Britain's own beauty spots. Cruising with Jane McDonald and Christmas Cruising with Susan Calman set sail, and Down to Earth with Zac Efron follows the actor and a wellness expert on a search for healthy, sustainable ways of living.

Classic travel shows

A few series are pillars of the travel show. Around the World with Orson Welles, made in 1955, follows the great filmmaker through Europe with his own camera, a fascinating record of a world rebuilding itself. Globe Trekker, which began in 1994, sent young presenters backpacking on a budget through more than a hundred countries, and Rick Steves' Europe has been helping Americans plan European holidays for a quarter of a century with practical advice and enthusiasm.

Do You Speak American? travels across the United States to explore the many accents and dialects of American English, Road Trip USA visits landmarks and local characters across the country, and A Program About Unusual Buildings & Other Roadside Stuff celebrates giant ducks, hot-dog-shaped stands and other delightful roadside architecture.

Food and travel films

For a single evening, the Feature films shelf holds 56 titles. Alongside Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Julia and The Endless Summer, there is Walt & El Grupo, which follows Walt Disney and a group of his artists on a goodwill tour of South America in 1941, a journey that inspired the films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, and World Safari, a home-made adventure film from 1977 about two young Australians who spent years travelling through Africa and beyond.

David Beckham: For the Love of the Game follows the footballer as he plays matches on all seven continents, Bruce Lee: Tracking the Dragon visits the locations of famous martial-arts scenes, and Speechless: The Polar Realm and Aerial Ireland are beautiful, quiet films about landscapes. The Magic of Walt Disney World, a short film from 1972, shows the resort in its very first year, and Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets tells the human history of the canyon in giant-screen style.

Food and travel for every age

Food and travel documentaries are wonderful family viewing, and some suit particular ages especially well. Younger children enjoy the bright colours and big personalities of Good Eats, Inside the Factory, Gourmet Makes and The Pizza Show, and the animals, boats and trains of the railway and river journeys. The Magic of Walt Disney World and Walt & El Grupo are a delight for Disney fans.

Older children and teenagers are the perfect audience for Street Food: Asia, Salt Fat Acid Heat, An Idiot Abroad, Walking the Nile and the Michael Palin series, which combine adventure with real learning about other cultures. Grown-ups will enjoy Chef's Table, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and the slower, more reflective films about chefs and restaurants.

A few series show markets where animals are prepared for food or journeys through difficult places, and these are best watched together so that questions can be answered along the way. Every title page lists the genres and running time, and the official services show age ratings and offer kids profiles.

Planning a food and travel night

Food and travel documentaries are made to be paired with a meal. For a street-food night, choose an episode of Street Food: Asia and cook a simple version of one of the dishes at home, or order from a local restaurant serving the same cuisine. For an Italian evening, watch an episode of Tucci in Italy with a bowl of pasta, and for a pizza night, Chef's Table: Pizza and The Pizza Show are hard to beat.

Travel series are perfect for planning holidays or simply dreaming about them. Keep a map or a globe nearby during Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days or Simon Reeve's South America and mark each stop, or let each member of the family choose a country and find a series that visits it. Children who enjoy maps might like to follow Great Continental Railway Journeys on a railway map of Europe.

Many families like to cook a dish from every country they visit on screen, keeping a scrapbook of recipes and photographs. Save your choices to My List, export the list to the family television, and settle in.

How Watch now works

AniPlus is a guide, and every title page has a Watch now button that opens the series or film on JustWatch for the country you choose. JustWatch is a widely used service that lists where a title can be streamed on subscription, rented, bought or watched free with advertising. The country menu covers fifteen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and much of Europe, and your choice is remembered in this browser.

Food and travel series move between services as rights change, and the JustWatch page always shows the latest options. The Netflix originals, such as Chef's Table and Street Food, stay on Netflix, the National Geographic series are often found on Disney's service, the BBC and Channel 4 series on the services that partner with British broadcasters, and the public television cooking shows on PBS's own streaming service. Many classic travel series are also available free with advertising.

The help pages

Fifteen short guides are linked from the guide cards and the footer. How to watch with AniPlus follows a title from the poster rows to its official service, Finding a documentary gives search tips, and My List explains how to save titles and carry the list to another device.

The theme guides open the shelves one by one: Home cooking shows, Chefs and restaurants, Food journeys, Food stories, Michael Palin, Simon Reeve, Railway and river journeys, Walks and expeditions, Travel hosts and Food and travel films, each with a few recommendations.

The practical pages cover Where AniPlus documentaries stream and The official AniPlus site, which describes how the real address looks.

A world tour on the sofa

Read together, the catalogue is a tour of the whole world. Europe appears in Great Continental Railway Journeys, Rick Steves' Europe, Michael Palin's New Europe, Tucci in Italy, Rick Stein's Spain, Greece with Simon Reeve and Ireland with Simon Reeve, and Britain's own coasts and countryside in Susan Calman's Summer By the Sea, Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig and Robson Green's Weekend Escapes. Asia is the setting for Street Food: Asia, Joanna Lumley's Japan, Paul Merton in China, Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure, Japan with Sue Perkins, Rick Stein's India and Himalaya with Michael Palin.

The Americas are covered from end to end, from Great Alaskan Railroad Journeys and Stephen Fry in America to Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico, Stephen Fry in Central America, Street Food: Latin America, Brazil with Michael Palin and Simon Reeve's South America. Africa appears in Sahara with Michael Palin, Walking the Nile and Mystery of the Nile, and Australia and the Pacific in Australia with Simon Reeve, Bill Bailey's Australian Adventure, Martin Clunes: Islands of the Pacific and The Pacific: In The Wake of Captain Cook.

A family could spend a whole year travelling this way, one country or region each week, cooking a dish from each stop and marking the journey on a map on the kitchen wall. By the end, the children would have visited every continent and tasted a little of each.

The presenters we love

A food or travel series is only as good as its guide, and the catalogue is full of memorable ones. Some are explorers, like Levison Wood and Simon Reeve, who travel hard and listen carefully. Some are comedians, like Romesh Ranganathan, Sue Perkins and Bill Bailey, who find laughter in every situation and make friends wherever they go. Some are actors, like Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Martin Clunes and Stanley Tucci, who bring warmth and storytelling to every place they visit.

The cooks are just as varied: the patient teachers of America's Test Kitchen From Cook's Illustrated, the playful scientist of Good Eats, the generous hosts of Barefoot Contessa and Nigella Bites, the adventurous travellers of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted and Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the joyful eater of I'll Have What Phil's Having. Finding a favourite presenter is one of the pleasures of exploring the catalogue, and the title pages list the hosts so you can follow them from series to series.

Hidden gems

Beyond the famous titles, the catalogue rewards curious viewers. Sushi: The Global Catch follows sushi from its origins in Japan to its worldwide popularity, Miso Hungry follows a comedian who eats only traditional Japanese food for twelve weeks, and The Ants and the Grasshopper follows a Malawian farmer who travels to America to share her knowledge of growing food. We Speak Dance follows a trained dancer as she learns traditional and street dance styles from local experts around the world.

The Inland Sea is a poetic journey through the islands of Japan's Seto Inland Sea, Sleep Furiously is a gentle portrait of a farming village in Wales, and How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy lets a great documentary filmmaker cook and talk about his life. Kevin McCloud's Escape to the Wild visits families who have built new lives in remote places, and Conquering Southern China follows two friends cycling five thousand kilometres along the back roads of southern China.

Why food and travel matter

Food and travel documentaries do more than make us hungry or restless. They introduce viewers to people whose lives are very different from their own and show how much we share: the love of a family meal, the pride of a cook in a well-made dish, the welcome offered to a stranger. Many of the presenters on AniPlus, from Michael Palin to Samin Nosrat, travel with humility and curiosity, and their series are a gentle lesson in respect for other cultures.

For children, these documentaries can open the door to geography, history and languages, and to the idea that every place on the map has its own stories, songs and recipes. A child who has watched Street Food: Latin America or Walking the Himalayas will look at a map, or a menu, a little differently.

A short history of the travel show

Travel films are as old as cinema. Early filmmakers mounted cameras on trains and ships to show audiences places they could only dream of visiting, and by the fifties television had brought the travelogue into living rooms, with Around the World with Orson Welles among the most stylish. In the seventies and eighties, presenters began to put themselves at the heart of the journey, and Michael Palin's Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days set the pattern that most travel series still follow: one curious, likeable guide, a long journey and many meetings along the way.

The nineties brought backpacker shows such as Globe Trekker, the 2000s comedians and adventurers such as Charley Boorman and Stephen Fry, and the 2010s a new wave of food-led travel from Chef's Table, Street Food and Salt Fat Acid Heat. Today, travel and food series are filmed with drones, tiny cameras and beautiful cinematography, but the heart of the form is unchanged: the pleasure of seeing somewhere new through someone else's eyes.

Happy viewing

Food and travel documentaries are generous films: years of journeys, recipes and meetings gathered into a few hours that anyone can enjoy from the comfort of home. AniPlus brings 184 of them together, with a page for each and a button that leads to the official services, so the next feast or adventure is only a few clicks away. Choose a title, set the table and enjoy the journey.

Bringing the shows into the kitchen

Food documentaries are at their best when they lead to cooking. Many of the cooking shows on AniPlus are built around recipes that families can try at home: Good Eats explains the reasons behind every step, America's Test Kitchen From Cook's Illustrated gives exact quantities and tested methods, and Jamie at Home and The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food focus on simple, generous dishes. Children can help weigh, stir and taste, and a recipe watched together is far more fun to cook.

The food journeys work well as inspiration too. After an episode of Street Food: Asia, a family might try making noodles or dumplings; after Salt Fat Acid Heat, they might experiment with salt and lemon in a simple salad; after Chef's Table: Pizza, they might make pizza dough from scratch. The stories of chefs such as Jiro Ono, Julia Child and Massimo Bottura show children that cooking is a craft that rewards patience and practice.

Many families find that food documentaries encourage children to try new foods. Seeing a dish cooked with love by a street vendor in Mexico or a grandmother in Italy can make it far more tempting than seeing it on a plate, and a meal inspired by a film becomes a shared memory.

Dreaming of the next trip

Travel series are also a practical tool for planning real journeys. Rick Steves' Europe is full of tips on museums, markets and transport, Travel Man: 48 Hours in... squeezes the highlights of a city into a weekend, and Great Continental Railway Journeys shows how much of Europe can be seen by train. For families dreaming of bigger adventures, the walking and motorcycle series show what long-distance travel really involves, from careful planning to the kindness of strangers.

Even for those who prefer to stay at home, travel documentaries are a window onto the world. They show the beauty of places far away and the friendliness of people everywhere, and they remind viewers of every age that the world is large, varied and wonderfully welcoming.

Food and travel through the year

The calendar offers plenty of excuses for a food and travel night. In winter, warming series such as The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food, Nigella Bites and Christmas Cruising with Susan Calman suit cosy evenings, and the long journeys of Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days or Full Circle with Michael Palin are perfect for the holidays, an episode a night. Spring is a good time for gardening and fresh produce with Jamie at Home and for planning summer trips with Rick Steves' Europe.

Summer calls for beaches, boats and barbecues: Susan Calman's Summer By the Sea, The Endless Summer, Chef's Table: BBQ and Cruising with Jane McDonald all capture the season. In autumn, when the evenings draw in, the great walking series such as Walking the Nile and Walking the Himalayas, or a food history like The History of Food, make a satisfying weekly ritual.

Special occasions can inspire a theme too. A birthday might call for Kings of Pastry and a homemade cake, a family reunion for a regional food journey from the country where grandparents were born, and the first day of a school holiday for an episode of An Idiot Abroad or Travel Man: 48 Hours in... to get everyone laughing. Whatever the season, there is always a journey or a feast waiting on AniPlus.

Questions