Comfort Classic: Pole to Pole

COMFORT CLASSIC

Michael Palin’s most ambitious trek is still a benchmark for the TV travelogue. Matthew Bell celebrates a master broadcaster

Seen again, almost three decades on, with the world at a virtual standstill due to Covid-19, Pole to Pole can induce mixed reactions. Michael Palin’s most adventurous trek is a delight. It overflows with the presenter’s love of travel and discovery, which, frustratingly, is precisely what we are missing right now.… Our only option is to soak up the sights and hope that, one day soon, we will be able to follow in Palin’s footsteps.

In Pole to Pole, which was first broadcast on BBC One in 1992, Palin undertakes a “hare-brained migration from north to south”. The eight-part series begins when he plants a pole into the Arctic ice, and ends, five and half months later, at the South Pole.

TV, though, is an untrustworthy medium: as Palin happily admits, he actually finished his journey back at the North Pole, after the rest of Pole to Pole was in the can. When the series started filming in July 1991, the summer Arctic ice was too thin for a plane to land there safely.

Having travelled through the Artic circle and Scandinavia, Palin arrives in what is still the Soviet Union at a fortuitous time. Communism is on its last legs and the country is suffering from shortages of pretty much everything, except the spirit of its people. Palin – a generous, empathetic presenter, who is always interested in the people he meets – marvels at the resolve of the Russians and Ukrainians.

At a distance of almost 30 years, Pole to Pole shows how much of the world

Pole to Pole

Globetrotter Michael Palin

BBC