IF you do a search on the Internet for “Brazil with Michael Palin”, chances are the results will feature a 1985 film directed by his old Monty Python mate Terry Gilliam. In it, Palin subverts his nice-guy image by playing Jack Lint, a hard-working but unscrupulous torturer who is loyal only to the regime that employs him.

Palin won’t be appearing as that character in his new four-part series Brazil With Michael Palin. Instead, he’s back to his affable best and back on the road. After spending the past 25 years travelling the world for TV shows, you’d imagine that Palin had been everywhere. But it turns out there’s one place he’s never been to and it happens be the fifth-biggest country on the planet – Brazil.

“I’d spent one night there in 1996, on the way from South Africa to Chile to fly to the South Pole, and had seen nothing except the salesmen on Copacabana Beach,” he says.

Brazil is a nation that, over the next four years, will increasingly be in the spotlight as host of football’s World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. Palin begins his tour in the north-east of the country, an area once populated by European settlers who grew wealthy by exploiting slave labour. Now it has a vibrant mix of cultures.

In Sao Luis, he learns about a 200-yearold ceremony performed on its backstreets, goes dancing, and samples life with the local area’s old-style cowboys.

Then it’s on to Salvador, where Palin learns about the religion of Candomble and tries African drumming before rounding off the first leg of his tour by taking a trip on a traditional saveiro boat.

Palin doesn’t take his wife – he’s been married to childhood sweetheart Helen since 1966 – or any of his three adult children on his travels. “It’s difficult enough to make these journeys with a crew of seven,” he explains. “There’s no time for family life really, it’s a sort of commando raid – a little group of people who all have something to do – and you wouldn’t take your granny on a commando raid.”