How ex-Monty Python comic Michael Palin became an accidental traveller when he accepted an offer to go around the world in 80 days, following the route of Phileas Fogg in the classic Jules Verne story. He looks back on the programmes and his diaries to reveal how the series was made and the impact it had. And fans and friends including Sir David Attenborough, Joanna Lumley and Simon Reeve reflect on his achievements. Little did he know the resulting series would become a huge hit, changing the face of TV travel programmes.
This episode explores how the success of Around the World in 80 Days opened the door for Michael Palin to tackle an even more ambitious journey for his next series. In Pole to Pole, Michael followed the line of 30-degree-east longitude from North Pole to South, an incredibly challenging route across the USSR, Africa and finally Antarctica. In the Arctic, Michael meets a solitary trapper who hunts for survival. Then, entering the USSR for the first time, Michael encounters the reality of life and bureaucracy under communism as he visits markets and tries to get a token to allow him to buy vodka. A detour to Chernobyl gives him a sobering insight into that disaster and its effects, but overall it is the warmth of the Russian and Ukrainian people that is the dominant memory he takes away. Two days after he leaves, there is a coup against Gorbachev, and the Soviet system starts to unravel - a truly historical moment.
In his third series, Michael Palin took on his most ambitious journey yet – a 50,000-mile route around the Pacific Rim, taking in Russia, China, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand and North and South America. This huge undertaking stretches him and the crew to their limits, and it sees Michael adopt a more investigative role as he seeks to get under the skin of the places he visits – from a booming South Korea to Colombia with its drug wars and poverty.
Michael revisits his fourth - and in some ways, most personal - travel series. Inspired by the apparent emptiness of the Sahara Desert as seen from a flight and by boyhood dreams of exploration, Michael sets off to find out what this ‘blank space’ contains. He is delighted and inspired by the societies he encounters there – nomads, refugees, artists. He also confronts some harsh realities – the effects of war, the migrant crisis and the rise of militant Islam. From Gibraltar, Michael looks across the Mediterranean to what is for him a mysterious land – north Africa.
This special episode sees Michael revisit his fifth travel series – Himalaya. For Michael, this epic journey across the world’s highest mountain range is the fulfilment of boyhood dreams inspired by the 1953 ascent of Everest by Hillary and Tensing. Beginning in the famous Khyber Pass, he travels through Pakistan and India and ascends into Nepal and Tibet to reach Everest base camp itself, before venturing into the mountain kingdom of Bhutan. But Michael’s journey isn’t all about scaling peaks – it’s also about finding out what life is like for the people who live in some of the harshest environments on Earth. He is curious to see countries that were cut off by the mountains for centuries and that have developed their own distinct cultures and ways of survival, to discover the different ways that religion influences society here, and to meet the hardy inhabitants of the mountains.
