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Endeavour: Everest by Canoe

Endeavour: Everest by Canoe

Sat Dec 28, 10-10.45pm, BBC4

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Episode one
Men were different in the ’70s. Instead of waxing their chests and fretting over brands of moisturiser, they steered canoes through terrifying rapids and ate Dundee cake. Unfortunately, documentary making has come a long way in the past 40 years too, meaning this account of a team of British canoeists’ record-breaking 1976 descent of the Himalayan Dudh Kosi river isn’t quite as breathtaking as it ought to be.

The footage of the river and surrounding landscape is fantastic, of course, with Everest poking over the horizon like the giant snowy bastard that it is. But the single narrator-led voiceover isn’t conducive to a compelling story, and the baffling omission of interviews with the expedition team (a couple of contributors provide a sort of retrospective commentary) means a sense of adventure is never really established.

But the format can’t stifle the machismo. The bit where one of the team nearly drowns is the highlight in terms of drama, and his subsequent assertion that ‘after 18 months of planning and ten weeks of getting there, you don’t give up because you’ve fallen in’ offers something to chew over. The next two nights see further Everest excursions, ‘Without Oxygen’ and ‘By Balloon’ respectively.
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