10-city tour! See the world with Showmax

You’d love to post those holiday snaps from a yacht on the Med, but World War III is looming, the exchange rate has burned your hard-earned cash to ashes, and your passport has “Kick me” stamped over your photo. But fellow traveller, the globe keeps spinning. And sometimes the most beautiful places in the world will spin right round to you.

We’ve put together a continent- and culture-hopping playlist of movies and series that will take you on the ultimate insider’s tour of world destinations. You can choose whether to spend an hour or two with the locals, or embrace your stay for several seasons. No queues, not airports, no immigration forms. Just point, click and go.

Bon voyage!

Quick connecting flights

Tokyo Vice Season 1-2: Visit turn-of-the-century Tokyo

Funny Woman Season 1-2: Visit 60s London

All That Breathes: Visit New Delhi

Eat Slay Love Season 1: Visit Hanoi

Blocco 181: Gangs of Milan Season 1-2: Visit Milan

100 Foot Wave Season 1-3: Visit Nazaré, Portugal

The White Lotus Season 1-3: Visit Sicily

Northern Lights S1: Visit Dublin

My Penguin Friend: Visit São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

Problemista: Visit New York City

10 cities in 10 shows and movies

1. Tokyo Vice Season 1-2

Crime drama series based on the life of American Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort), who was the first non-Japanese person ever to pass the reporters’ entrance exam for one of Japan’s biggest daily newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun. He reported on local crime between 1993 and 2005, making contacts within the yakuza, and the Tokyo police force. 

Visit turn-of-the-century Tokyo: The series was filmed on location in Tokyo, so travelers can look out for classic landmarks. In Season 1, we toured the Love Hotel Hill area of Shibuya, the Golden Gai nightlife area, and the nostalgic Ikebukuro Mikado Game Centre. And in Season 2, Tokyo Vice became the first-ever TV production (Japanese or international) that was allowed to film around the Akasaka Palace and Akasaka Esplanade nightlife district – after location manager Masanori Aikawa and his team approached every single business in the area to get special approval so that the police would grant them a permit.

2. Funny Woman Season 1-2

Based on Nick Horby’s bestselling novel Funny Girl, the British comedy series takes us inside the life of swinging sixties British TV star and former beauty queen Sophie Straw/Barbara Parker (Gemma Arterton) as she tries to make her mark in TV comedy. As the second season begins, Sophie has a contract from CTV channel head Ted Sergeant (Alistair Petrie) to create a new comedy series.

Visit 60s London: Funny Woman Season 2 filmed in strategic locations across Liverpool, Bolton, Blackpool, Manchester, Birkenhead and New Brighton to find spaces that production designer Jacqueline Smith and her team could make over to look like London in the 1960s. A plaza in Bolton doubled as Trafalgar Square, the Derry & Tom’s department store scenes were filmed at Martins Bank in Liverpool, and the CTV (think BBC) building was staged at an old glass factory. With Barbara’s star on the rise, production was also able to build her a swanky new penthouse flat, fit for a lady on the prowl.

3. All That Breathes

Shaunak Sen’s Peabody Award, Sundance Grand Jury Prize. and Cannes Best Documentary-winning film invites us into the world of brothers Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, who built a basement clinic where they have spent the past 20 years treating and rehabilitating New Delhi’s injured black kites. 

Visit New Delhi: All That Breathes has the patience to sit quietly and reveal the real city in a way no tourist could imagine! Nadeem and Mohammad have spent years studying New Delhi’s unique ecosystem and the animals like pigs, tortoises and rats who’ve managed to scratch out a living alongside the city’s human residents – all clinging to survival in the face of pollution. And their respect for “all that breathes” shines through as they act as our guides to their world. 

4. Eat Slay Love Season 1

To celebrate her 42nd birthday, Queens Court star and R&B star Nivea combines her friend groups when she invites Eva Marcille (The Real Housewives of Atlanta), Tammy Rivera (Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta) and British comedian and Sumotherhood star London Hughes, on a grand girls’ trip to Vietnam. It’s a chance to sightsee, embrace the culture, heal broken hearts and enjoy some much-needed slow time, sisterhood, and shopping.

Visit Hanoi: The trip starts off in Hanoi’s old quarter, where a sudden outbreak of drama flares up hotter than the street vendors’ frying pans. We visit the Lý Club restaurant, get custom dresses made at Nhà Mốt Phan Hải, and fight all the way back to the hotel in the hired car. The squad also tours the rest of Vietnam, planting rice in Ninh Binh, and swimming at Nha Trang. 

5. Blocco 181: Gangs of Milan Season 1-2

Italian gangland drama series. Bea (Laura Osma), the sister of local Misa boss Ricardo (Juan Cely Delgado), forms a surprising love triangle with Ludo (Alessandro Piavani), who’s a courier for cocaine kingpin Lorenzo (Alessandro Tedeschi), and Mahdi (Andrea Doder), who’s the nephew of Nicola Rizzo (Alessio Praticò), the mobster who controls Milan’s Block 181 neighbourhood. But can love defeat the struggle for power in Blocco 181?

Visit Milan: While fashionistas prowl Milan’s bougie heart, the workers who keep that heart beating live on the outskirts, in the massive social housing complexes called the Blocco. The series filmed in over 100 locations to capture the Barona neighbourhood in south west Milan, as well as taking us inside San Vittore prison. We also get to visit the harbour at Genoa. Gritty, industrial and teeming with life, the Blocco is an introduction to authentic Italian life and street fashion.

6. 100 Foot Wave Season 1-3

Documentary series. In 2005, Dino Casimiro, a teacher and surfer who grew up in the little fishing village and beach resort of Nazaré, photographed the giant waves that dashed the lighthouse on the local cliffs, and sent them to American big-wave surfing pioneer Garrett McNamara. Now, 20 years later, Nazaré is on every big wave surfer’s bucket list. This series documents the community’s awe over Nazaré’s waves, and their determination to understand their physics with the help of the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute (which has been studying Nazaré’s waves since the 1960s), and records their efforts to surf a skyscraper made of water.

Visit Nazaré, Portugal: It’s not about the shopping, museum or monuments. Nazaré is one of those rare places where humans come terrifyingly close to understanding the true power of nature. The series pays respect to the community that supports these insane international surfers, including the jet ski drivers and makers, cliff spotters, videographers, restaurant owners, trainers, scientists and government officials. 

7. The White Lotus Season 1-3

Mike White’s addicting, award-winning comedy-drama series centres on the lives and leisure of the super-rich, along with their exploitation of the White Lotus luxury resort staff who tend to their every whim. The first season was filmed in Hawaii during COVID-lockdown, so we didn’t get out much. But in Season 2, the show went wild touring Siciliy and the Italian islands. After that, the White Lotus staff in Thailand had to brace themselves for anything from robbery, to the looming possibility of family murder. 

Visit Sicily: Sicily’s San Domenico Palace in Taormina stood in for the White Lotus resort, with its views of the Ionian Sea and Mount Etna. Scenes were filmed in Noto and the coastal town of Cefalù, near Palermo, taking in historical sites like Taormina’s Ancient Greek Theatre, along with movie locations where they filmed The Godfather. And so what if the hotel manager thinks you look like Peppa Pig instead of Monica Vitti? Never mind, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge)! We support tourists who dress to theme and make their travel plans accordingly. Take that Vespa ride along Taormina’s mountain roads! Swallow those bugs! 

8. Northern Lights S1

A touching drama series about grief, resilience and humour. When Lloyd (played by series writer and creator Stephen Jones, who based the show on his play) sees Áine (Eva Trill) standing on a bridge outside his flat one rainy night in Dublin, he steps in, hoping to save her from making a terrible decision. As he gives her shelter and talks her ear off over his twin passions for karaoke and reading, the two make a connection and they wind up talking, laughing and crying around the city for a whole weekend, regailing each other with their lives, loves and losses. 

Visit Dublin: The action starts us off on Grattan Bridge, which crosses Dublin’s River Liffey. From there, it gives us an intimate, insider’s view of the north of the inner city around Capel Street and Northside Quays, as Lloyd shepherds Áine around his favourite places. We even get to nip off to Belgium at one point. 

9. My Penguin Friend

In May 2011, Brazilian fisherman João Pereira De Souza saved a young Magellanic penguin that had been caught in an oil spill on Ilha Grande beach near Rio de Janeiro. He took the bird home and nursed it back to health, and nicknamed it DinDim (pronounced Jin-Jin). For years afterwards, the 4.5kg little penguin continued his holiday visits with his favourite human in Brazil. Their story inspired director David Schurmann’s new live-action film My Penguin Friend – with a flock of rescue penguins playing DinDim, and human actor Jean Reno (Mission: Impossible) playing João.

Visit São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro: The village of Ubatuba in São Paulo stands in for João’s real-life home in the fishing village of Proveta, along with Rio de Janeiro’s Paraty, where the Portuguese colonial architecture and cobbled streets made a perfect fishing village-style setting for João and DinDim’s daily walks. Perfect for your fantasy Brazilian beach holiday, Ubatuba boasts tropical jungle, golden beaches and crystal waters. As a travel bonus, we also get to visit a highly protected penguin breeding habitat in Patagonia, Argentina.

10. Problemista

Julio Torres (Fantasmas and Los Espookys) plays Alejandro Martinez, a young man who left El Salvador for New York City to fulfil his calling as a maker of fantastical children’s toys. But to achieve that, he has to face down whatever beast lies at the heart of the US immigration labyrinth. He might be in with a chance when he connects with demanding art critic Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), who agrees to sponsor his visa renewal – provided he can help her to stage a successful exhibition of her (cryogenically frozen) artist husband Bobby’s (SZA) work.

Visit New York City: Prepare for a tour of New York that’s so real you can almost smell it! Julio’s Big Apple is filled with artistic “still lives” of garbage piles, as a deliberate pushback against on-screen depictions that make New York look like a credit card advertisement. Julio also insisted that instead of everyone having gigantic empty apartments, that they live with plastic bags, clutter everywhere, rat nests of cables, stained walls and smeared glass. While Problemista was filmed in the Queens and Brooklyn neighbourhoods (taking over the Seaport Gallery at 106 South Street to film their art exhibition) the film also takes us into Alejandro’s inner landscapes as he navigates online spaces like the US Immigration portal, which he imagines as an endless series of stacked escape rooms.

So where are you going today? Spin your globe and press play.