Equator is a seemingly simple idea. Simon Reeves goes around the world following the equator. Indeed the idea is so simple, that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Michael Palin has already done it.
But the selection of countries that Reeves visits in this first episode explains why it hasn't been done before. First up is Gabon where Reeves (previously seen in series like Meet The Stans), quickly manages to contract malaria, and where we find imported foie gras on the shelves of the local supermarket. He skips Congo where, we learn, westerners are likely to be killed if they visit, and goes onto the Democraftic Republic of Congo (previously Zaire) which has been war torn for many years now. Even here, he's not completely safe, and it's only in Uganda and then Kenya that he can relax a little. Even Reeves doesn't try to get into war-torn Somalia - a country that gives new meaning to the word lawless.
There's so much packed into a single one hour programme that you're left quite breathless. Given that it must have take a good month or two to film this part of the trip, it's almost too rushed. I know that we live in an "MTV" society, but I reckon transversing the width of Africa must be worth at least two epsiodes of a series.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the series - next week he crosses Asia!
You do read Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn every week in The Guardian Guide don't you? It's the most fun, most vituperous column on television (and I do include Victor Lewis Smith in this equation).
Brooker's just completed a second series of Screen Wipe finishing with a double length edition focused on American television that was very fair. I did love the fact the show opened with the music from, and mock graphics to Entertainment USA. I'll be honest - I used to really enjoy that programme (and I know that it's now not politically correct to enjoy anything that Jonathan King has ever done in his life now).
Brooker guided us pretty accurately around American telly, and showed us, as we know, that there's some really good stuff, and some really bad stuff. Which reminds me, I must really really catch up with The Wire. I've only seen part of series 3 and I stopped watching when I realised that I really needed to start watching from the start.
He had Rob Long explaining some of the shortcomings of the American sitcom, and how he preferred British stuff - although I'm not entirely sure what he's meaning aside from Ricky Gervais' recenet ouvre or perhaps one or two other things. I've been watching series two of Supernova and generally it's left me, well, uninspired. That's just one programme obviously, but you know what I mean. And I must get my podcast stream working for Rob Long's Martini Shot again.
Then we had The Daily Show's Lewis Black who was as entertaining as ever. I thought the sequence where Brooker played a focus group excerpts of various British shows was a little unfair. Yes The Bill, Eastenders and Countdown are all enormously popular in their own ways, but a few badly acted moments from both series probably doesn't help. And the appeal of the resolutely "analogue" Countdown must be nigh-on impossible to explain to a non-Brit (even if the show is actually French in its origin).
Still I'll forgive him anything for his spot on critique of Jeremy "Jezza" Kyle in the first programme...
Sorry, I know I rarely if ever post anything into this TV review category. Must try to do better.
So to Blizzard featuring BBC2 man-of-the-moment Bruce Parry leading a team of Brits against a Norweigian team across Greenland acting as a mock race to the South Pole. They're in vintage gear and although being tailed by camera crews, they're living as Scott and Amundsen would have done in 1911/2 when their "race" to the pole was in full swing. The two twenty-first century teams are also travelling in the same way as their predecessors did, Amundson using dogs, and Scott man-hauling (ie. dragging their kit along in sledges).
The programme doesn't really answer any questions as it claims it might. Scott's expedition has been analysed in extraordinary detail by many books and programmes before now. But it does give us a really good idea of what it might have been like on that expedition. The injuries, the frustrations and the sheer difficulty of what they were trying to achieve.
Blizzard (and incidentally, I don't think that the title is particularly apt at all - Blizzard conditions had very little to do with either expedition - it was more the early onset of winter that finished Scott's team off) ran over six episodes, strangely scheduled twice a week, and there was no surprise that the Norweigians travelled there and back with weeks to spare, while Parry's team travelled for 90-odd days missing their pole and heading back a bit before the producers pulled them out a few days early due to the fact that their rations, like Scott's, were leaving them malnourished.
The programme did skillfully weave the present day attempts against what Scott and Amundsen would have been facing, telling the story with dramatic reconstructions, but all shot from afar.
I think the only problem with this programme was its sheer length. Six hours is a long time to follow an expedition when the scenery is generally unchanging, yet it's taking well over three months to film in reality.