Monday, January 19, 2009

Movie/TV Monday: Around the World in 80 Days

No, not the Jackie Chan movie, or even the Oscar winning 1956 version, but instead a British series from 1989 starring Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) in his attempt to recreate Phileas Fogg's journey around the world without the use of air travel.

While I stuck this on my Netflix instant watch queue on a complete whim, it turned out to be a truly good series. Palin is funny when he needs to be and completely serious the rest of the journey, giving you a very unique look at travelling around the world. Much of his time is spent on different cargo ships (since there just aren't that many passenger boats anymore), and he meets some of the most interesting people during the travels.

Matt and I have already planned to start watching his next series Pole to Pole this week, and I hope that it's as well put together as this series was. I enjoy travel shows for the simple fact that I (like most people) wish that I could have a camera follow me on my journeys throughout different cultures and provide my own voice to the opinions of how beautiful this is or how good that tastes.

Too bad that will never happen, but at least by watching shows like this, I can get a taste of the rest of the world so that when I come into a massive amount of money I can actually go out and experience it.

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