Michael Palin - Around the World in 80 Days Part 2. DVD 1989 / 80 nap alatt a Föld körül Michael Palinnel / Directed by Roger Mills / BBC / Episodes: A Close Shave, Oriental Express

UPC 5999544243743

REGION 2 PAL DVD  

MADE IN HUNGARY

AUDIO: English mono, Hungarian mono

SUBTITLES: Hungarian

Runtime: 2x 50 minutes

English Summary:

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin is a 7-part BBC television travel series first broadcast on BBC1 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 Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less. Palin was given the same deadline, and not allowed to use aircraft, which did not exist in Jules Verne's time and would make completing the journey far too easy. He followed Phileas Fogg's route as closely as possible. Along the way he commented on the sights and cultures he encountered. Palin encountered several setbacks during his voyage, partly because he travelled with a five-person film crew, who are collectively named after Passepartout, Phileas Fogg's manservant.

Hungarian Summary:

Episodes: A Close Shave, Oriental Express

Epizódok: Borotvaélen, Oriental Express

A Close Shave

In Bombay, Palin finds himself a week behind Phileas Fogg. After getting a quick shave from a blind barber under a tree and seeing a snake charmer's cobra, he is able to get a train ticket to Madras in south-eastern India. Before leaving Bombay, he visits astrologer Jagjit Uppal who, after giving him a chart for a baby to be born to one of his referees, Robert Hewison, tells him he will complete the journey on time, possibly even ahead of schedule and that time lost will be made up throughout the voyage. He also suggests that this will be just the first of many epic journeys Palin will make over the coming years.

Palin then embarks on the Indian Railways express line called the "Southern Express" for Madras in Tamil Nadu state. On the way, it stops in Pune, where Palin talks about his father winning two rowing cups there in 1923. In Madras, he has difficulty finding 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. The agreement allowed only Palin and the cameraman Nigel Meakin to travel aboard the ship, and on condition that they worked 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.

Palin later reunited with the captain of the Croatian ship in Rijeka, Croatia, during filming of his New Europe series. This meeting was not shown in the original broadcast of the series but it is on the deleted scenes on the DVD.

Oriental Express

Palin finds that the ship had indeed sailed from Singapore. However, quite fortunately, it was only four miles from shore and Palin was able to make it on board using a fast motorboat. While in Hong Kong, he has a big win betting on a horse race, is attacked by a cockatoo and meets up with his friend, photographer 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 journey to Shanghai. On the train, he is asked by a Chinese businesswoman if he carries an umbrella all the time. Palin replies, "I just get wet." He also collects the roofing tile requested by Terry Gilliam from a very old railway station.