Friends in high places

There is a tendency down here among the common folk to imagine that all famous people are friends. That they not only gather for awards shows and movie premieres but that on a Sunday afternoon they might be found doing one another’s toenails, trading stock tips or cooking a quick communal meal while their kids cavort in a really big pool.

Well, some famous people are friends with other famous people, and a glimpse is afforded by Sundance Channel’s rather too forcefully named “Iconoclasts.” Its third season of celebrity mash-ups and mutual admiration begins Thursday with Sean Penn and Jon Krakauer visiting the Alaskan sites of “Into the Wild,” the Krakauer book Penn recently made into a film. They ride in a boxcar, toast their shared subject (the late Chris McCandless) with White Russians, climb a mountain, talk.

Other shows this season pair Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and TV producer Norman Lear; Alicia Keys and Ruby Dee, Madeleine Albright and Ashley Judd. Even the most unlikely of these dyads seem perfectly natural if we accept that all fame is equal. Some of the subjects are already old chums -- executive producer Robert Redford paid a visit to Paul Newman in Season 1 -- while others are just taking advantage of the opportunity to meet a hero.

In any case, they are not sitting in a TV studio, under TV lights, falling back on their professional personalities. The result seems at once more casual and more fabulous -- like peeking over a fence at that Saturday afternoon party.

-- Robert Lloyd

(Sundance Channel, Thurs., 10 p.m.)