[1] The series has eleven one-hour episodes, and sees Pilkington visiting Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United States.

Lastly, he spends a day with Daniel Suelo, who gave up his worldly possessions and finds happiness in a homeless lifestyle.

Then he tries out the careers of traditional Japanese benriya or odd-job man, including posing in figure drawing and cleaning an apartment where he accidentally pokes a hole in a paper wall.

He flies to South Africa, to meet self-made millionaire Kenny Kunene, who shows Karl his extravagant lifestyle including swimming in a pool full of girls, riding in Kenny's new McLaren car, riding in a helicopter over the township, having a butler, browsing at luxury watches, and getting a facial and massage.

His final stop is in Los Angeles, where Karl meets Project Runway designer Joshua Christensen[9] and tries his hand at being a catwalk model in a Hollywood fashion show.

He next helps a mortician prepare the body of Madam Comfort Asaaba Cofie, a 79-year-old woman who had died a month earlier, for her funeral.

He next goes to the Philippines, where he visits a cemetery that also functions as a small town where people live and work among the dead and assists in the exhumation of a body.

Back at home, Karl takes delivery of a custom coffin he ordered himself and his girlfriend in the shape of a Twix wrapper, and then drives to the beach to demonstrate his idea for a new type of memorial along the boardwalk there.

[5][10] At about three-quarters of the way through each North American broadcast, Science aired a brief "never-before-seen clip" from The Moaning of Life featuring Pilkington commenting on an issue during filming of the episode.

He spends time with a Buddhist monk, a costumed vigilante, a Mormon fundamentalist polygamist family, a creative philanthropist, an nonagenarian skydiver, and a man who does 'extreme ironing'.

Next, Karl travels to India to meet a practitioner of Shivambu, or urine therapy, and another man who believes he doesn't need to eat, as he absorbs all the energy he needs from the sun.

First, Karl travels to Mexico to perform an underwater inspection in raw sewage and meet a man who's recycled plastic bottles into his own island.

Then he travels around the United States to have his upper body put in casts, get made up to look and feel old, after which he competes against some elderly track and field athletes, and spends time with a man pretending to be a dog.

Despite the final episode having not yet aired in the United Kingdom due to its postponement, the entire first series was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 18 November 2013.