Humour, insight and genuine passion: Michael Palin takes top honours in TV travel world

Re-runs and DVDs demonstrate just how good Palin’s programmes are

Sir Michael Palin's Big Three Adventures, available as BBC DVD box-sets, benefit from regular viewing. Picture: Scott Reid

Having travelled a gazillion miles up and down and around the world you wouldn’t blame Sir Michael Palin for wanting to put his feet up. Not that he shows any sign of doing so, despite reaching the ripe young age of 80.

It’s only last year that the former Python was on our screens tackling a 1,000-mile trek across Iraq when his contemporaries seem quite content undertaking nothing more strenuous than pruning the odd rose bush. His adventures in the war-torn nation followed televised jaunts to North Korea, Brazil, “New Europe” (particularly enlightening to watch again following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), the Himalaya region, the Sahara and his 1999 journey of discovery retracing the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway through the US, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.

I’ve got the DVD box-sets and each of them merits repeated viewing. However, it’s what I like to label Palin’s Big Three that benefit from regular consumption. Around the World in 80 Days is likely to be the one that most people are familiar with. Filmed in 1988 and broadcast across seven episodes a year later by the BBC, the series sees the Yorkshire-born comedian and actor stick as closely as possible to the path described in the famous Jules Verne novel, without resorting to flying. Having been aired multiple times on various channels over the years and currently available to stream on BBC’s iPlayer, a spoiler alert is probably not necessary (the journey ends 79 days and seven hours after it began).

Thanks to the success of 80 Days, Palin’s globe-trotting continued with Pole to Pole, an eight-part series first broadcast in 1992 that involved travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, while Full Circle with Michael Palin - a circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim in ten parts - got its television debut in 1997.

The trilogy of ever-longer adventures (almost 80 days, six months and a full year, respectively) works for me as the programmes combine just the right levels of humour, insight, suspense and genuine passion. They also offer a fascinating snapshot in time of countries undergoing seismic change, for good or bad, and prove that Palin has no equal when it comes to TV travel presenting.

Scott Reid is a business journalist at The Scotsman