Palin's travel documentaries are my happy place - I love his gentle manner and his kind and thoughtful view of the world. Often I'll take them with me on my own journeys to keep me feeling sane and grounded. As such it's hard to prize them apart in my own mind but watching Pole to Pole on its own recently I was struck by how historical a series it is particularly - even though it covers a fraction of the ground of something like Full Circle the year in which he sets went from the north to the south pole, 1991, was one of enormous change. We see him leaving the USSR just as it begins to fracture, he sits on a huge toppled statue in Ethiopia a scant few months after the Derg were overthrown and he wades through the ghosts of colonialism across Zambia and Zimbabwe then still lingering in Africa - and his visits his former neighbours in Soweto, recently returned after the release of Mandela and the repeal of apartheid.
In his five and a half month stint he and his plucky team capture a tremendous snapshot of a world in flux - teeming with ordinary people just trying to get on with their lives which thirty years later in our own turbulent times seems somewhat of a comfort to me.
In his five and a half month stint he and his plucky team capture a tremendous snapshot of a world in flux - teeming with ordinary people just trying to get on with their lives which thirty years later in our own turbulent times seems somewhat of a comfort to me.