An Idiot Abroad Can Cross Improved Ratings In Season 2 Off Its Bucket List

While Karl Pilkington may not be celebrating the Bucket List’s worth of daring and uncomfortable tasks he’s set to compete during the second season of An Idiot Abroad, Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, and Stephen Merchant can celebrate the hefty ratings boost the series’ second season premiere earned on the Science channel this weekend.

Perhaps absence made our hearts grow fonder of AIA, or the wait for An Idiot Abroad 2: The Bucket List, which aired in the U.K. last fall, gave the viewership time to grow. Regardless, more than a few people tuned in on Saturday night to watch the series’ return to the Science channel. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the season premiere took in 1.3 million total viewers for Saturday’s premiere, up from the 773,000 viewers that tuned in for last January’s series premiere on the network.

An Idiot Abroad follows Gervais and Merchant’s friend Karl Pilkington as he visits various places and tries new things, which he often doesn’t appreciate. The Season 2 premiere had Pilkington bouncing from island to island meeting with natives, testing his survival skills, participating in the sport of “arseboarding,” and doing a bit of land-diving (which for Karl, is falling a few feet to the ground while tethered to a huge structure).

While the increase in ratings for the second season premiere does suggest that Karl is on the rise, it sounds like Gervais is making it his mission to make Karl a superstar.

"It's fantastic news. I won’t be satisfied until Karl is as big a phenomenon as Justin Bieber,” said Gervais. “I just hope it doesn't all rest on hair.”

An Idiot Abroad 2: The Bucket List airs Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. ET on Science.