The highlights of a 16-year-old six-part series condensed into one 90-minute jaunt made for a restorative dose of Palin – except for the unnerving intimations of mortality
Look, I am sure that back in the Before Times or even in the early stages of the pandemic, it seemed like a very good idea to repackage one of lovely Michael Palin’s loveliest trips, through the Himalaya and its environs in 2004, and have him reflect on it and his younger self from the comfort of his own home in Michael Palin’s Himalaya: Journey of a Lifetime (BBC Two). The viewers would get the highlights of the six-part series condensed into one 90-minute jaunt and a restorative dose of Palin, the BBC would get a relatively cheap hour and a half to fill the schedule in straitened circumstances, and at no point would one of our greatest national treasures be killed by overexertion or Covid. Win-win-win.
Except that now we are immersed in the pandemic era, and intimations of mortality shadow us everywhere, it becomes virtually impossible to avoid the sense that this has been designed as – or at the very least is functioning as – Palin’s swansong. As the hagiographic tributes from talking heads mount up, you are dragged reluctantly to the conclusion that this will be the thing they show when … when the time comes that a televisual obituary is required. And that’s even before 94-year-old Sir David Attenborough turns up to comment on the snow-capped mountains and the art of conveying the essence of a place to those watching at home and inadvertently remind us that … well … you know, and oh God, I am too emotionally fragile for all this.
