Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime, BBC 2, Sunday
I may not be alone in this, but I think Michael Palin changed my life.
It took about a decade after the Around The World in 80 Days series was broadcast, but I did my own version of Phileas Fogg (minus the time limit) in the late 1990s.
It wasn’t exclusively down to Palin and his ground-breaking travel programme, but it certainly played its part.
Thus, this sepia tinged look back at the Palin travelogues had an emotional aspect for me.
I watched the various TV series religiously and Christmas and birthdays inevitably brought the accompanying books and VHS cassettes.
Palin was a ratings phenomenon at the time, transforming travel TV from the rich and famous style of Whicker’s World to that of a middle-aged backpacker.
Travels of a Lifetime revisited Around the World in 80 Days last week and this week it was on to Pole to Pole.
After the enormous success of the first series, Palin was left to decide what the next travelogue would be and a brain storm with his team came up with the idea of travelling from the north pole to the south pole along 30-degrees longitude.
This saw the Monty Python man travel over as little water as possible and down through Scandinavia, the USSR (as it was in 1991), Turkey, Africa from tip to tail, and finally Antarctica.
This was perfect Covid television for the BBC as it involved minute cost, with the only actual travel involving a trip to their own archive and Palin’s home.
There were also contributions from other travel show presenters – Simon Reeve, Joanna Lumley and, oddly, David Attenborough.
In truth, they didn’t have much to add other than that Palin was brave, good company and changed the genre.
The real point of the nostalgia show was to watch Palin in his impressive library pulling out original diaries and reading aloud about what happened when he arrived in Kiev in a snowstorm, when the train failed to turn up in the Sudan or he was left minding someone’s sheep in Egypt.
It was wonderfully distracting television, although I can’t see it being of much interest unless you’re old enough to have watched the originals.
In all Palin made eight travel shows between 1989 and 2012. The four-part Travels of a Lifetime recalls just four, including Full Circle (his longest journey at 50,000 miles around the Pacific Ocean) and the 2002 series Sahara.
A bit like the first time around, I see a sequel ahead.
***
Adult Material, Channel 4, Monday
If you’ve been longing for television drama to move away from its traditional genres, this could be the show for you.
Be warned though, the title is correct, this is for adults only.
Some of it makes for uncomfortable viewing as we follow lives entwined in the British porn industry.
Our hero is Hayley Burrows (Hayley Squires) who performs under the title Jolene Dollar so that she can give her children the education she didn’t have.
At 33, Hayley is coming to the end of her career and her patience with the industry.
Things come to a head when newcomer Amy (18) is abused on set and set upon by a notorious actor whom she stabs in the stomach.
Hayley takes vulnerable Amy under his wing and into her house, threatening her long-time relationship with porn impresario Carroll Quinn (played by an unrecognisable Rupert Everett).
Just two episodes in, it’s slightly early to say if this is significant television, but there is something captivating about Hayley’s character that made me want to overlook the gruesome bits and stick with this drama.
