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| Michael Palin's New Europe : Complete BBC Series | 
 enlarge | Artist: Michael Palin
Studio: 2 Entertain Video
Category: DVD
List Price: £24.99
Buy New: £12.97
You Save: £12.02 (48%)
New (18) from £12.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 1065
Format: Pal
Rating: Exempt
Running Time: 450 minutes
Number Of Items: 3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5014503225629
ASIN: B000VA3J4S
Release Date: October 22, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Old Palin, not New Europe March 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you want to watch a old man's holiday video around Europe, I recommend that you purchase this dvd. On the other hand, if you want to be informed about the changing face of Europe over the past 20 years, I recommend that you buy some books by the likes of Timothy Garton-Ash.
There's very little that I enjoyed on this DVD, despite persevering through all seven episodes. Whenever Palin stumbles across something interesting, he gives it a couple of minutes before heading off to some lame student theatre to 'entertain' us with his cringe-worthy attempts at acting in front of a room of 20 year olds. How is this showing us Europe? It isn't.
When he's not in theatres, he's usually found getting some kind of 'wacky' health treatment, while probably lying next to some famous person or other. And we're usually subjected to at least 10 minutes of this meaningless tripe.
I found this dvd offensively poor. Palin comes across as another ignorant Englishman, hashing up the two words he attempts to say in any other language, speaking loudly in English and making terrible jokes to beautiful women that he pervs over while they guide him around.
You'd be better off putting your money towards a ticket to Europe than buying this.
Superficial and lazy treatment of a fascinating semi-continent March 4, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Over last few years while living in Old Europe, I grew increasingly conscious of my family's Eastern European roots. I now take every opportunity to explore the lands and people previously familiar to me mostly from childhood stories. I have also with much interest followed Michael Palin's grand escapades since the very first episode of Around the World in 80 Days. With these two loci converging, I keenly anticipated his New Europe series. I was curious whether Palin would confirm my own impressions of the countries I already know, while offering additional insights and interpretations. Similarly, I hoped that he would provide insightful appetisers of the countries I have yet to visit, and help me prioritise my next few journeys. That's what a good travelogue should accomplish.
New Europe, to employ the label this series adopted, is a semi-continent of contrasts and contradictions, of a strident embrace of the future and its new possibilities, as well as a new insecurity and nostalgic clinging to recent past, no matter how painful and deceitful it actually was. Palin's series had an outstanding opportunity to illuminate these tensions, and give us a balanced analysis of our newly rediscovered neighbours.
It is sad that Palin's series fails to achieve this. It is badly let down both by its format and execution. There may be many effective ways of approaching the subject, but the "artificial vignette" style was a poor choice, lazily executed. Backed by the Palin powerful brand and BBC's enterprising resources, a team of researchers were presumably sent out months ahead to various East European capitals with the mission to arrange, typically,
1.a local twenty-something babe to welcome Palin and show him around,
2.a local "character" for Palin to interview ("make sure it's someone quirky and colourful") and,
3.a couple of equally quirky activities for Palin to self-depreciatingly engage in - you know the type, an "impromptu" invitation to get onstage with some performers, drive a steam train, and so on.
City visits often end with a "surprise" invitation by colourful locals for a singalong barbecue - to demonstrate that a typical extended family in New Europe consists of a band of pig roasting folk musicians, forever on the lookout for a lone foreigner to invite along (providing he has an international film crew in tow). Rather than destroy stereotypes, Palin and his team of researchers appear to go out of their way to reinforce them.
Palin visits a health spa and ends up "unexpectedly" sitting in a mudbath next to the current Miss World, who happens to have the next day or two free to accompany him around the city. Pleasant experience for Michael I'm sure and a coup for the research team, but how did this advance our understanding of New Europe?
The formula is tired, predictable and above all dishonest. This side of WWF, once an audience start feeling duped, they rapidly loose empathy with a programme and its presenter. I watched three episodes at random, and I grew increasingly frustrated. The interviews were superficial, with Palin politely asking shallow and uninspired questions. There was no real engagement and debate, no trying to unravel the real web of tension that is New Europe, just Palin majoring in his role of the slightly awkward but polite uncle at a family wedding.
As for the Boratesque historical and cultural insights - hey, we are not that dumb! In these days of budget airlines, one can safely assume that much of Palin's audience have themselves walked across Wenceclas Bridge, suntanned on the Adriatic and/or skied in Bulgaria. We know about the Berlin Wall, many of us have pieces at home. We watched Ceausescu's fall on TV in 1989. Some of us can even recall the essence of the Yalta Agreement. Yet these are the places and events presented by Palin like he's exposing some astounding novelties, and even these are dealt with superficially. This felt painfully patronising at times. Even in our soundbite times, BBC's target audience can surely cope with more substance.
There is little useful travel advice. I do not feel I got to know the places Palin visited any better, and I picked up precious little that would help equip me further for my travels. I cannot replicate most of Palin's exploits and encounters, as I do not have a team of researchers working months ahead to organise these.
The series fizzled out on a Baltic beach. I was expecting Palin to finally synthesise his trip, to distil some interpretation and present his decomposition of the complexities of New Europe. Here was his chance to balance the superficiality of his "artificial vignettes" with some gravitas. I almost physically held my breath, willing him to turn things around with a closing piece of insightful analysis. No chance. After a couple of slender platitudes, Palin turned his back on the camera and walked along the Baltic beach. As another helicopter shot funded by TV licence payers panned across, the question that must have resonated in a thousand households was "is that all?!?".
If I sound bitter, it is because after decades of suffering from dictatorships, hardships, discontinuity and uncertainty, New Europe deserves much better that this superficial, artificial, formulaic and above all lazy treatment.
 Mostly good January 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I did enjoy this as always with Michael Palin's jaunts, but the problem with this series is that it tended to dwell on fairly undeserving subjects for too long and then skim over ones I wanted to see more of. Previously Michael Palin has generally got the balance right between the rich histories of towns and whole countries, the people living there and their kinds of lives, politely showed differences both great and small between 'us' and 'them', and drew contrasts to make me feel part of the adventure. This time around certain people and places occupied far too much of the episodes and at times I didn't care that much about where he was, or where he was off to. Maybe that's partly because of how the world has changed since his wonderful series' in the late 80s and early 90s? Travel is easier and cheaper, and immigration between, from, and to previously unvisitable countries blurs borders everywhere. I remember watching Around The World In 80 Days and being so wrapped up in it all, but a lot's changed since then and this series highlighted how 20 years has changed Europe's make up.
Dipping into cultures and societies is hard to do at the best of times, but if it's going to be done, I suppose choosing the subject matter has to be done more carefully than it was here in order to get the balance right. Or maybe that's just down to poor editing and Mr Palin is just as good as ever? I'd still recommend this for anyone's collection.
i enjoyed it! some may have had different expectations. December 27, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
in reading the reviews it strikes me that some viewers may have had very high expectations of what would be covered in a specific country, perhaps because it was the country they are from or very very familiar with because of family. (IMHO generally michael travels through countries where the majority of people will not be on amazon online to post a review of what was filmed and shown of their country.)
the programme couldn't possibly cover everything in-depth in the time alloted - and i'm sure there were some behind-the-scenes reasons why choices were made. it probably would have been more in-depth if there were less countries to cover - i believe it was 19 this time!
i am a huge fan of michael palin and the series, and thoroughly enjoyed the programme about new europe. it gave me a taste of each country, and also a respect for the depth of history each has. because these countries were no-go during the cold war, i had no idea what to expect or what i would see. it was eye-opening and wonderous to see all these 'old' countries in 'new europe' in full-colour ... to see and meet the people, to feel that human connection. much sadness to see how war devastates. much enlightenment to hear, see and actually understand the long and steeped history of each country. (the flat history books of my youth just didn't bring it to life in school). to see where countries are now ... and their aspirations, dreams and hopes.
it has given me an appetite to learn more about each of the countries featured.
thank you michael palin and crew.
 Dziekuje Mr Palin December 11, 2007
4 out of 15 found this review helpful
The best series by far!!! I have recently read the book and loved it. And the TV series was brilliant. And even if you think it's a bit long-winded, then just pause the DVD and TAKE A BREAK!!!!!!
*"Dziekuje" means "thank you" in Polish
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