Episode 1
Pula to Pazin
2025-03-10 • 29 min
Michael Portillo mounts a valiant defence against fierce latter-day Roman gladiators in Pula's amphitheatre as he begins a journey across the Balkan countries of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
TV season
2025-03-10
Bradshaw's 1913 Guide in hand, Michael Portillo embarks on another rail journey.
Episode 1
2025-03-10 • 29 min
Michael Portillo mounts a valiant defence against fierce latter-day Roman gladiators in Pula's amphitheatre as he begins a journey across the Balkan countries of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Episode 2
2025-03-11 • 28 min
Ably assisted by Lila, an expert labrador, Michael Portillo hunts for truffles in the Istrian countryside near the hilltop town of Buzet.
Episode 3
2025-03-12 • 28 min
Michael Portillo’s railway adventure reaches the Dalmatian coastal city of Zadar, once an important Venetian trading hub and still a centre for the production of Maraschino cherry liqueur.
Episode 4
2025-03-13 • 29 min
In Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, Michael Portillo traces the fateful last journey in 1914 of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.
Episode 5
2025-03-14 • 29 min
Michael Portillo enjoys a journey on the historic line from Sarajevo to Mostar, descending 600 metres through the Dinaric Alps, reflecting on the divisions which tour apart the old Yugoslavia.
Episode 6
2025-03-17 • 28 min
Michael Portillo embarks on a Scandinavian railway adventure from the Norwegian port of Bergen to the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
Episode 7
2025-03-18 • 28 min
Michael Portillo’s rail journey continues on the Bergen Line, heading towards the Norwegian capital of Oslo, with its fine modernist architecture and 19th-century parliament building.
Episode 8
2025-03-19 • 28 min
Michael’s saga resumes in Larvik on Norway’s southern coast, where he investigates the city’s prized natural resource, a distinctive blue rock named larvikite.
Episode 9
2025-03-20 • 29 min
Michael Portillo’s Scandinavian rail adventure reaches Denmark’s second city, Aarhus, an architectural playground with dazzling contemporary buildings set alongside historic half-timbered houses.
Episode 10
2025-03-21 • 29 min
Michael Portillo concludes his epic rail journey across Norway and Denmark, crossing an 18-kilometre box girder bridge between the islands of Funen and Zealand, known as the Great Belt Bridge.
Episode 11
2025-03-24 • 28 min
Michael Portillo is transported 150 years back in time to the tiny Alpine village home of Switzerland’s most famous child, Heidi, and heads to the Rhine Gorge, also known as the Swiss Grand Canyon.
Episode 12
2025-03-25 • 29 min
Michael Portillo ventures into the bowels of an immense hydroelectric dam to learn how the Swiss use their mountainous environment to power the country.
Episode 13
2025-03-26 • 28 min
In Zurich, Michael has a brush with the absurd in the anarchic paintings of the Dadaists and visits the Grossmunster Church to learn about the rebellious pastor at the centre of the Swiss Reformation.
Episode 14
2025-03-27 • 29 min
Michael Portillo scales the Swiss Alps on one of the the steepest cog railways in the world and visits the 19th-century fairy-tale Grand Hotel Giessbach.
Episode 15
2025-03-28 • 29 min
Aboard the Golden Pass Express, Michael Portillo wends his way in style down steep mountainsides from Interlaken to the Swiss Riviera. In Lausanne, he contends with a knife-wielding robotic arm.
Episode 16
2025-03-31 • 28 min
Michael Portillo’s rail travels take him to the north west corner of France, where he explores the beautiful regions of Brittany and Normandy and learns of their connections with Great Britain.
Episode 17
2025-04-01 • 28 min
Michael Portillo’s railway journey reaches the naval port of Brest, home to France’s oceanographic fleet. He also learns how to make a sweet, buttery Breton cake called kouign-amann.
Episode 18
2025-04-02 • 29 min
Michael Portillo’s railway adventure reaches Rennes, capital of Brittany. At the Lycee Emile Zola, he hears how the school was used as a military court for the second trial of Alfred Dreyfus.
Episode 19
2025-04-03 • 28 min
In Bayeux, Michael Portillo admires the Bayeux Tapestry, the 70-metre-long work of art commissioned to record William the Conqueror's conquest of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Episode 20
2025-04-04 • 29 min
In the apple orchards of the Calvados region, Michael Portillo discovers how the classic digestif has been distilled since 1865 at the Pierre Huet estate.