So you thought there was nowhere left on earth that hadn’t already been covered by a Michael Palin travelogue? Well think again! The globetrotting ex-Python turns his attention to Eastern Europe, and his new documentary, in which he visits twenty of its countries, is as timely as it is entertaining.
With EU enlargement, Eastern Europe – and Eastern Europeans – are part of our everyday lives, so Palin takes the time to explore people and places that form the other half of our continent. It makes for excellent, stimulating and educational viewing, as he traces borders which have shifted and evolved beyond recognition over the course of the last century, and countries, which – for Palin and his generation – could only be glimpsed through the shutters of the Iron Curtain.
I imagine that most of you knew that Transnistria existed (between Moldova and the Ukraine) but I didn’t. And I certainly didn’t know how Eastern Europeans felt about the end of communism and the dawn of a New Europe.
‘Of course I miss communism, when we had communism my parents and my grandparents were alive and I was a happy child. Now I am a grown-up and alone,’ says one.
‘Transylvania would be a backwards agricultural area without that wonderful Irishman Bram Stoker, now we have masses of tourists that we can make things for and sell things to,’ says another.
Palin’s questions and conversations have a sharper, more relevant edge, but the series is none the worse for it. There is some incredible photography of unspoilt countryside and what, to us, look like 18th century cities, but, as always, the programmes are about the people. Somewhere between the traditional Englishman abroad and everyman observer, Palin makes an ideal travel companion.
In May 2006, Michael Palin and his team embarked on a journey through Eastern Europe's new democracies to explore how the region and its people have developed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
