Seeing 'New Europe' now, 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain gives a 40000 feet image about what is happening on the other side of the continent for the British and Western viewers who are the principal target audiences if I am not mistaken. The series try to position themselves on the middle of the road between the TV travel series and the investigative documentary, but they just succeed to scratch the surface of the two genres. It is not that screen time is missing - seven series of one hour each could have been enough for saying many interesting and important things about the complex fate and the sinuous development of the countries that Palin visited. It is preparation time that seems to have been missing and what the authors have chosen to do was to pick a little bit of everything for each country some political comments, interviews with important figures in the life and history of the latest 20 years and with Brits traveling or settled in the visited areas, exotic landscapes, folklore, esoteric health treatments. The combination has an air of superficiality. It is not that the serious political comment is completely missing - actually many observations are quite sharp, but they lack deepness, and the trivia wrapping they are delivered in gives a sensation of entertainment show which may actually have been the principal intent, but which cannot win my enthusiasm.
Review of New Europe
