Shackleton: The Complete Series (1983)

A gripping four-part drama about the great explorer s epic Antarctic expeditions, based on Shackleton s own journals. Having had a taste of Antarctic adventure on Captain Scott s failed 1901 bid to reach the South Pole, seven years later Ernest Shackleton (David Schofield) leads his own expedition. Agonisingly close to reaching the Pole, the men have to pull back in an appalling blizzard to reach their ship before the advancing ice cuts off the passage home. By 1911 Roald Amundsen has reached the Pole and Scott and his men, trailing in the Norwegian s wake, have perished. Undeterred, in 1914 Shackleton and his trusted deputy Frank Wild (David Rodigan) set out their most famous journey aboard Endurance, with the aim of crossing the icy continent from sea to sea. When the ship is trapped and crushed by pack-ice, Shackleton and five of his men embark on a desperate 800-mile journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia in the James Caird, a 20-foot lifeboat pitched against the furious Southern Ocean. Once they hit land, the fastest way to reach help on the other side of the island will be to improvise a route across the treacherous mountain interior. With Wild and the rest of the men left behind with dwindling supplies at their makeshift camp, the survival of them all hinges on this last desperate gamble.