Great Continental Railways Journeys: Series Three [DVD]

With his "Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide 1913" in hand and wearing his trademark colourful jackets, Michael Portillo makes six memorable train journeys through the European continent and beyond.TULA TO ST PETERSBURGMichael explores the eastern-most extreme of Europe as he travels through Russia from the golden domes and icons of Tula to Moscow, and the splendour of St Petersburg.ROME TO TAORMINATravelling down the spine of Italy from Rome to Sicily, Michael takes in the sights of the capital from the back of a 1950s Vespa on his way to see Mount Etna.WARSAW TO KRAKOWMichael explores a country where east meets west: Poland. Starting in Warsaw, he travels to Krakow, where he braves a road trip in an iconic communist car.LA CORUNA TO LISBONMichael discovers Galicia's Celtic roots, before crossing the border into Portugal; visiting Santiago de Compostela, he finds a guidebook considerably older than his Bradshaw's.HAIFA TO THE NEGEV DESERTVenturing beyond Europe, Michael explores the Holy Land visiting Haifa and Jerusalem before heading south to the buoyant waters of the Dead Sea.LYON TO MARSEILLEBeginning with a cookery lesson in the capital of cuisine, Michael journeys from the heart of France to Marseille's vast port, gateway to the former French empire.

All these hotels and restaurants are top of the range so copying the routes needs serious £ notes.Does give some good ideas for places to go and see though. Very pleasant.

Six more journeys for the likeable and personable Michael Portillo taking him to the extremes of Europe (Russia and Poland, Galicia, Sicily) and beyond (Israel and the Holy Land) and more. I find these continental journeys even more interesting than the excellent British journeys largely because each episode lasts an hour as opposed to half an hour for the British ones. Once you take into account the opening scenes and the closing summary and credits on the British Railway Journeys each episode only really contains about 24 minutes of new material. As there have been only 17 Continental episodes (115 released to date + 20 for Series 6 for the British Railway Journeys) there is still plenty of scope to visit new overseas destinations. In my opinion, the British Journeys are becoming a little repetitive, although different interviews are included, many towns and cities have been visited on more than one occasion. Compulsive viewing and I eagerly await news of Series 4 which should be aired in the autumn and released on DVD next Spring.

Series 1/2, DVD and Series 3 DVD do not appear to be available in blu ray format. However, I played them through my blu ray disc player which I understand upscales the picture quality and I found this to be there or thereabouts what you would see with the naked eye if you were standing there. HD and now Ulra HD are great for animation and some film genres but I feel for realism the images are sometimes too sharp, bright and vivid in colour - everything we view is softened by shadow. Let's face it, if we saw everything in HD we wouldn't bother watching DVDs we'd simply just walk around the streets being blown away by what we could see. Amazon delivered on time, well packaged. I give the DVDs 5 stars - expertly produced, great entertainment and a great source of escapism , complemented with lashings of Darjeeling tea and marmalade crumpets - wonderful !

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This is a great series following on from the Great British Railway series. A natural progression for the series, this follows the same format of the British series and is full of fascinating information about the places visited. Michael Portillo was a great presenter for the British series and is just as good here and it is obvious that his ability to speak many European languages was a great help for this series. Forget his political past, he is a great ambassador for rail travel and an interesting presenter for this series

Looking forward to working my way through them again, after a long time seeing them before.

In my declining years, nothing has surprised me more than becoming a fan of Michael Portillo! Steve Richards writing in the Independent recently described him as "determinedly likeable" and Portillo is the perfect host for these light but engaging travelogues. True he gets up to a few rather silly antics in the course of the tours but each programme has many points of genuine interest and novelty and they are presented with erudition. At the very least these programmes provide plenty of ideas for continental travel of one's own.