Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days
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Around the World in 80 Days is a BBC television travel series first broadcast in 1989. It was presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. The show was inspired by Jules Verne's classic novel Around the World in 80 Days, in which the character of Phileas Fogg takes on a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less. Palin was given the same deadline, and was forbidden from using any mode of transport that did not exist in Jules Verne's time, most notably aircraft. He followed Phileas Fogg's route as closely as possible. Along the way he commentated on the sights and cultures he encountered. Palin encountered several setbacks during his voyage, partly due to the fact that he travelled with a five-person camera crew.
The programme was a critical and commercial success, winning strong ratings in the UK and selling well abroad. It was also released on video tape and later on DVD.
Following the trip Michael Palin wrote a book about the experience. This book contains much more detail than could be present in the TV programme, and Palin's personal views are also more clearly evident. The book contains many pictures from the trip.
Around the World in 80 Days was followed by several similar conceptual travel series starring Michael Palin. These were Pole to Pole (travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole), Full Circle (circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim), Hemingway Adventure (following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway), Sahara (travelling around and through the Sahara Desert), Himalaya (travelling around the Himalayas), and New Europe (travelling around Eastern Europe).
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[edit] The Journey
The series was presented in seven episodes.
[edit] The Challenge
Palin accepts the offer from the BBC to attempt travelling around the world in 80 days. After setting off from the Reform Club in London, he boards the Orient Express at Victoria Station in London, while reminiscing on his rigorous preparations for his extraordinary circumnavigation, which include a daily exercise programme, a chat with seasoned TV traveller Alan Whicker, and the purchase of an inflatable globe. He also has dinner with his 'referees', who include fellow Pythons, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. After taking a ferry across the English Channel, Palin rides across the Alps by train before being stopped in Innsbruck due to an Italian train strike. Arriving in Venice by coach, he helps the local sanitation department clean up the city. After that, he travels to the Corinth Canal and Athens, where he sees the world-renowned evzones, as well as a die-hard Python fan. After a brief stopover in Crete, Alexandria beckons.
[edit] Arabian Frights
Palin arrives in Alexandria, Egypt and has difficulty getting a train to Cairo. On arrival, he attends a local soccer match and appears in a cameo role in an Egyptian film. After seeing the Pyramids in Giza and riding a camel sharing his name, Palin runs into trouble when a ship he was supposed to board develops engine issues and cannot sail. Even though he is able to board a ferry from the city of Suez to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, he misses a key connection that would have taken him to Muscat. As a last ditch effort to save the journey, Palin and the director Clem Vallance are permitted by the Saudi authorities to drive across Saudi Arabia to Dubai with the rest of the crew (and their frowned upon camera equipment) making the journey by air.
[edit] Ancient Mariners
Palin recounts his trip from Jeddah to Dubai via Riyadh, and notes that he drove the distance from London to the Black Sea in one weekend.
In Dubai, the crew finds a good dhow to take to Bombay. Along the way, Palin bonds with the dhow's crew who were a family hailing from the Indian state of Gujarat, lets one listen to a Bruce Springsteen song on his Walkman, and develops a bad case of diarrhea, resulting in many trips to the ship's unique open-air latrine. The journey takes seven days.
Palin has said in interviews that he wants to meet up with the dhow's crew and thank them again for their gracious hospitality.[citation needed]
[edit] A Close Shave
In Bombay, Palin finds himself a week behind Phileas Fogg. After a getting quick shave from a blind barber under a tree and seeing a snake charmer's cobra, he is able to find a train to Madras in the south. Before leaving Bombay, he runs into an astrologer who, after giving him a chart for a baby to be born to one of his referees, tells him he will complete the journey a day ahead of schedule.
Palin then embarks on the Indian Railways express line called the "Southern Express" for Madras, Tamil Nadu. On the way, it stops in Pune, where Palin talks about his father winning two rowing cups there in the 1923. In Madras, he finds himself in trouble trying to get a connecting boat to Singapore. Eventually, an "...Anglo-German-Indo-Yugoslav agreement the UN would have been proud of" was reached and Palin sets off on a Yugoslavian freighter, eleven days behind. According to the agreement, only Palin and the cameraman Nigel were allowed to travel aboard the ship, and on condition that they acted as deckhands. That meant that Palin had to take a "crash course in sound recording" so they could film aboard the ship. Arriving in Singapore, Palin worries whether or not his connecting boat from Singapore has sailed. If it had, it would have been impossible to complete the journey in eighty days. Fortunately, the connecting ship is only 4 miles out and Palin is able to make it on board using a fast boat.
Palin later reunited with the captain of the ship in Rijeka, Croatia, during filming of his New Europe series.
[edit] Oriental Express
The ship had sailed from Singapore, but it was close enough to the coast for Palin to catch it and sail on to Hong Kong. While there, he wins big in a horse race, is attacked by a cockatoo and meets up with his friend Basil Pao. He attends a party thrown in his honour at the halfway point (in terms of days) in the journey. Then it is on to Guangzhou for a dinner of shredded cobra and then a train to Shanghai. On the train, he is asked by a Chinese businesswoman if he carries an umbrella all the time. Palin states, "I just get wet." He also collects the roofing tile requested by Terry Gilliam from an archaic train station.
[edit] Far East and Farther East
In Shanghai, Palin gets some herbal remedies to help him on the rest of his trip. He and Basil take in a Chinese jazz band. After parting with Basil the next day, he takes a Chinese ferry to Yokohama, where he rides the world-famous shinkansen train into Tokyo. Meeting up with David Powers, a British journalist, he is taken to a sushi bar and then a karaoke bar, where he sings "You Are My Sunshine" as a duet. After spending the night in a capsule hotel, he gets on board a container vessel to cross the Pacific Ocean. The journey takes eleven days and is very dull, enlivened only by a game of pass the parcel with the Singaporean crew, and the crossing of the International Date Line. After crossing the line, Palin partakes in an unusual ceremony to commemorate it, involving getting doused in tomato paste and flour, and drinking a strange cocktail containing many ingredients, among others, "eggs, curry powder, cocoa...". Palin suggests that some people involved in the ceremony watched Full Metal Jacket to prepare for it.
[edit] Dateline to Deadline
Arriving in Long Beach only two days behind Fogg, Palin spends his first night in America aboard the embedded Queen Mary. After a few days, he boards an Amtrak from Los Angeles and travels to Glenwood Springs. He takes a hot-air balloon ride and a dog sled trip in Aspen. After a nerve-wracking delay he realizes he probably should have stayed on the Chicago-bound train, and leaves the Rockies frantically. Eventually arriving in New York, he boards the final ship of his journey dead even with Phileas Fogg on Day 71. After eight days on the Atlantic Ocean, he arrives in Felixstowe, touching Great Britain for the first time in two and a half months. A few train connections later, he arrives at his starting point, the Reform Club in London, but is not allowed in to film. The journey ends 79 days and 7 hours after it began. The closing credits show Palin chatting with his referees.
[edit] Production
The journey around the world lasted from September 25, 1988 to December 12, 1988. Palin travelled through the following countries by foot, train, boat, balloon, and husky dog, amongst other methods of transportation: United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, India, Singapore, the People's Republic of China, Japan, and the United States.
Only four members of Palin's film crew completed the circumnavigation: Clem Vallance, Roger Mills (the directors), Angela Elbourne and Ann Holland (production assistants). The others who started with him left when he got to Hong Kong, and were replaced by others. Strictly speaking, however, it was only Palin (and the director) who obeyed the rules of the journey, as Palin was not allowed to take the production crew on his road trip across Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The remainder of the crew flew from Jeddah to Dubai. During the Jeddah to Dubai episode, Palin managed to snap a few pictures which are seen on the documentary.
While preparing for the journey, Palin had a chat with renowned documentarist Alan Whicker. In the book and an interview on the DVD, Palin mentions that Whicker had actually been the BBC's first choice of presenter, but he and two others had declined; Palin was fourth on the BBC's list.
Coincidentally a straightforward adaptation of Jules Verne's book was also broadcast in 1989. It was a three-part miniseries co-produced by US and European broadcasters, starring Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, and Palin's fellow Monty Python alum Eric Idle as Fogg's assistant Passepartout.
[edit] External links
- Palin's Travels - the official web site
- Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days at the Internet Movie Database
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