Review | What to stream this weekend: in Michael Palin: Into Iraq, veteran presenter is as genial as ever as he travels around a cradle of civilisation on BBC Earth
- BBC Earth’s Michael Palin: Into Iraq takes the octogenarian travel presenter around the Middle Eastern cradle of civilisation, including the rubble of Mosul
- In Netflix K-drama Strong Girl Nam-soon, Lee Yoo-mi plays a Korean woman, lost in Mongolia as a child, who heads to the Korean capital to find her parents
But for Michael Palin, plus his friend and photographer sidekick, Cheung Chau’s Basil Pao Ho-yun, Hong Kong might never have appeared on as many world travellers’ “must do” lists as it has.
It featured memorably in the acclaimed 1989 travelogue Around the World in 80 Days, which became the avuncular ex-Python Palin’s ticket to a new career as the genial, non-confrontational travel documentary presenter par excellence.
Now 80 himself, in Michael Palin: Into Iraq (BBC Earth), he is still calling on those qualities to deliver a three-part sketch of people and places from the north to the south of the country.
Palin’s expedition begins not in Iraq, but across the border in what’s called Turkish Kurdistan, depending on political persuasion.
Following the Tigris River, he crosses into Iraqi Kurdistan (an autonomous entity), before continuing into Iraq “proper”, then taking in Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Tikrit and Basra – names familiar from the “war on terror” of 2001 onwards.