Shows Like Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days
If you loved Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days's Documentary storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks

Expedition Unknown
The adventures of Josh Gates as he investigates unsolved iconic stories across the globe.

The Reluctant Traveller with Eugene Levy
Award-winning actor and nervous explorer Eugene Levy steps out of his comfort zone for a whirlwind tour of the world's most beautiful and intriguing destinations.

Travel Man: 48 Hours in...
British comedian Richard Ayoade (later taken over by Joe Lycett), accompanied by a celebrity guest, takes a ruthlessly efficient approach to travel, covering everything top tourist destinations have to offer in just 48 hours.

Planet Earth
David Attenborough celebrates the amazing variety of the natural world in this epic documentary series, filmed over four years across 64 different countries.

Galapagos
The history of these beautiful Islands from their creation as uprising lava to their being studied by Darwin to their modern day inhabitants.

The Curse of Oak Island
Follow brothers Marty and Rick Lagina through their effort to find the speculated - and as of yet undiscovered - buried treasure believed to have been concealed through extraordinary means on Oak Island.

One Strange Rock
A mind-bending, thrilling journey exploring the fragility and wonder of planet Earth, one of the most peculiar, unique places in the entire universe, brought to life by the only people to have left it behind – the world’s most well known and leading astronauts.

The Men Who Built America
Influential builders, dreamers and believers whose feats transformed the United States, a nation decaying from the inside after the Civil War, into the greatest economic and technological superpower the world had ever seen. The Men Who Built America is the story of a nation at the crossroads and of the people who catapulted it to prosperity.
More Shows Like Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days

Science of Stupid
This show combines cold hard science with some of the craziest, most spectacular and painful user generated clips ever recorded. Richard Hammond introduces all manner of mishaps featuring brave, if misguided individuals from around the world and then explains the science behind their failure and humiliation with the use of bespoke animations and super slo-mo cinematography. Every episode features between 50 and 60 clips of misadventure – ordinary folk making extraordinary mistakes. Each week watch stunts involving weightlifting, shooting guns or jumping over cars, that have gone wrong, paused, re-wound, and re-played and analysed to determine exactly what went wrong and why. Richard explains the physics, chemistry and biology at play, then presents forensic details to explain the stupidity that resulted in failure. He’ll look at everything including weight, volume, momentum, combustion and even how the brain operates. This is misadventure explained. This is the Science of Stupid.

Earth at Night in Colour
Filmed across six continents, this docuseries uses cutting-edge camera technology to capture animals' nocturnal lives, revealing new behaviours filmed in full color like never before.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.

Great Migrations
Shot from land and air, in trees and cliff-blinds, on ice floes and underwater, this documentary tells the powerful stories of many of the planet's species and their movements, while revealing new scientific insights with breathtaking high-definition clarity and emotional impact. The beauty of these stories is underscored by a new focus into these species; fragile existence and their life-and-death quest for survival in an ever-changing world.

Life on Our Planet
Life's extraordinary journey to conquer, adapt and survive on Earth across billions of years comes alive in this groundbreaking nature docuseries.

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Anthony Bourdain uncovers the best cuisine across the world. At each location, Tony dives headfirst into life's colorful and rich pageant, bringing his intellectual curiosity, empathy, wit and boundless appetite.

Prehistoric Planet
Experience the wonders of our world like never before in this epic series from Jon Favreau and the producers of Planet Earth. Travel back 66 million years to when majestic dinosaurs and extraordinary creatures roamed the lands, seas, and skies.

The New Edition Story
Follow the story of R&B pioneers Michael Bivins, Ricky Bell, Ronnie Devoe, Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill as they navigate fame from their native Boston to Hollywood and beyond.

Natural World
Natural World is a nature documentary television series broadcast annually on BBC Two and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history brand. It is currently the longest-running series in its genre on British television, with more than 400 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, but individual programmes can be in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or films made and distributed by independent production companies and purchased by the BBC. Natural World programmes are often broadcast as PBS Nature episodes in the USA. Since 2008, most Natural World programmes have been shot and broadcast in high definition.

Welcome to Earth
Will Smith whose curiosity and wonder is positively infectious—is guided by National Geographic Explorers traveling to different corners of the world to get up close and personal with the weirdest, most unusual, dangerous and thrilling spectacles of the planet.

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Bourdain travels across the globe to uncover little-known areas of the world and celebrate diverse cultures by exploring food and dining rituals. Known for his curiosity, candor, and acerbic wit, Bourdain takes viewers off the beaten path of tourist destinations – including some war-torn parts of the world – and meets with a variety of local citizens to offer a window into their lifestyles, and occasionally communes with an internationally lauded chef on his journeys.

Mountain Men
Profiles of some of the men who choose to live off the grid in the unspoiled wilderness, where dangers like mudslides, falling trees and bears are all part of everyday life.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days (1989): Documentary themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days.
See full details for Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days (1989)