Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime

Comedic actor Michael Palin recounts five of his travel TV shows starting with the great Around the World in 80 Days and then Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara, and Himalaya. It's six episodes. Michael is going through his notes and personal recordings. There are other travel show hosts commenting on how Michael inspired them and changed the nature of the travel show. One thing that this show definitely did. It got me to watch again a couple of those shows, and watch the Sahara and Himalaya for the first time. This show gives a bit of behind the scenes but it's mostly Michael recollecting. Old Michael is still very charming.

This doc is a nice reflective recollection/retread of the first three of Palin's big journeys and randomly Sahara. I understand not including New Europe or Brazil (too painful and too recent respectively) and Hemingway was narratively quite different but excluding Himalaya seems odd. Watching him recount his experiences and rake through his archives is deeply pleasant and a nice reminder of how empathetic, gentle and lovely his travelogues were. However having constant talking heads ruminating on his worth and legacy seems so facile and their appearances are so scattershot that it feels like a foolish afterthought. I mean, how can you doubt that an hour in the company of Palin isn't just fundamentally watchable television?! This isn't to discredit the talking heads - you've got Attenborough fer chrissakes but a second of him and like, fifteen solid minutes with one of Derry Girls earnestly describing things you've just seen seems off.

... IF the series didn't feature random supposed celebrities providing worthless and highly irritating commentry on Michael Palin's wonderful series. We only need to see Michael Palin providing a retrospective commentry thankyou.

Having grown up on Palin's travels, it was really nice to see him look back on some of his past journeys and reflect on them. It is good to gain new bits of insight from him about certain moments.

I could personally have done without so many random people popping up to comment, who just seemed to be taking time away from Palin himself, who was the person that we were all there to see, but I would struggle to knock a star off for that because there is so much great content in these shows.