Galahad of Everest

This spectacular but extremely bizarre BBC documentary recounts the madcap efforts of actor Brian Blessed to exorcise an obsession that has dogged him since childhood: to follow the footsteps of mountaineers George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irving's fated 1924 attempt on Everest. It charts his preparation in England, the trip to India, a blessing by the Dalai Lama, to a final assault on the summit, kitted out à la Mallory in '20s plus-fours and umbrella. Davidson intercuts archive footage of Mallory's original expedition with a snow-blasted Blessed reading Mallory's last letters from five miles high. If this sounds like your average 'climbing movie', it isn't. It adds up to a hilarious study in English eccentricity.