Episode 1 explores how ex-Monty Python comic Michael Palin became an accidental traveller when he accepted an offer to go round the world in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg. Little did he know the resulting series would become the biggest hit of his career, change the face of TV travel programmes, and lead on to three decades of adventures in subsequent series like Pole to Pole and Full Circle.

Episode 2 explores how success of 80 Days opened the door for Michael Palin to tackle an even more ambitious journey for his next series. He would follow the line of 35 degrees latitude from North Pole to South, an incredibly challenging route across the USSR, Africa and finally Antarctica.

Episode 3 explores how, in his third series, Michael Palin took on his longest and most gruelling journey yet – a 50,000-mile route around the Pacific Rim taking in Russia, China, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand and North and South America. This huge undertaking stretches him and the crew to their limits.

Episode 4 sees Michael revisit his fourth, and in some ways most personal, travel series. Inspired by the apparent emptiness of the desert as seen from a flight, and by boyhood dreams of exploration, Michael sets off to find out what this ‘blank space’ contains. He is delighted and inspired by the societies he encounters there – nomads, refugees, artists.

This epic journey is for Michael the fulfilment of boyhood dreams. Beginning in the famous Khyber Pass, he travels through Pakistan and India, to Dharamshala, where he meets the Dalai Lama. He then battles altitude sickness to reach the base camp at Annapurna, where he is treated to some of the most spectacular views on the planet. And just possibly comes close to meeting a Yeti.

Continuing his Himalayan journey, Michael ascends into Nepal and Tibet to reach Everest base camp itself, where he follows in the footsteps of his heroes, 1920s mountaineers Mallory and Irvine. He meets a Yak herder on the great Tibetan plateau, head-hunters in Nagaland, and explores the magical mountain kingdom of Bhutan before finally descends to sea level in Bangladesh.