Along the way he commented on the sights and cultures he encountered. He followed Phileas Fogg's route as closely as possible. Palin was given the same deadline, and not allowed to use aircraft, which did not exist in Jules Verne's time and would make completing the journey far too easy. The show was inspired by Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less. It was presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. Brazil was one of the few countries that Palin hadn’t visited before, and this four part documentary looks at the people and places.Title sequence of the series featuring passport-style markings.Īround the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin is a 7-part BBC television travel series first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989. “ New Europe” (2007) where Palin and company visit 20 countries that have emerged since the fall of communism and the subsequent breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in the 1990’s.īrazil (2012) is the most recent of the Michael Palin travelogues. Himalaya (2004) which covered a small amout of ground (only 3000 miles) but involved a lot of vertical climbing into the mountains, including a visit to the Everest Base Camp at 17,500 feet. Sahara (2002) in which Palin visits 10 countries and territories that border on the Sahara desert. Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure (1999) in which Michael Palin tries to reconcile the myth and reality of one of America’s greatest writers in the centenary of his birth. Pole to Pole (1991) saw Palin travel from the North Pole to the South Pole, down the section of the earth that has the greatest amount of semi-continuous land (Scandinavia, Europe/Asia and Africa).įull Circle (1997) where Palin and crew travelled around the Pacific Rim, covering 50,000 miles over 10 months. The success of Around the World in 80 Days opened the door for more travel adventures for Mr. I don’t think I should spoil it for you, should I? I can still hum the theme song in my head. Palin was an affable host and a knowledgeable traveller. In many ways, it was proto-“reality TV”, predating “Survivor” by 10 years and “The Amazing Race” by 15. I remember tuning in every Sunday night with my family (when I was in high school) to see if he could actually get it done. The show was a critical and popular hit for the BBC as well as Michael Palin, and it had everything I was into – adventure stories, a healthy dose of “route talk”, and a fair bit of absurdist humour. The idea of this seven part series was that Michael Palin would try to recreate (as closely as possible) the route the fictional Phineas Fogg took to circumnavigate the globe in Jules Verne’s 1873 classic novel, and to see if it was actually possible to do the journey in 80 days. Life changed in 1989 when the BBC hired Palin for Around the World in 80 Days. Why don’t we take a moment and enjoy a bit of the silliness again? In particular, he was familiar to many as the “straight man” in the famous “Dead Parrot Sketch” duelling with John Cleese. Palin was known mostly as a founding member of Britain’s influential and ground-breaking comedy troupe, Monty Python. Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-98, covers the ten-year period where Michael Palin began to make a name for himself as a world traveller. Michael Palin’s most recent collection of journal entries was published this past autumn.
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