Review Pole to Pole with Will Smith – Every Moment Is Great or Exciting | TV and radio

HBollywood stars – they’re just like us! Except when we want to go on a fun/massive rehab trip for ourselves and/or our career, we have to pay for it. And we generally don’t get to go on a 100-day adventure across seven continents, with experts there to introduce us to their indigenous people, talk us through world-changing research being conducted in the most isolated places on Earth, show us wonderful new species to be found there that may contain a cure for all known diseases, and guide us through breathtaking landscapes that make you want to throw yourself to the ground and cry at the beauty laid out before the largely indifferent eyes of humanity.

Not so for Willard Carroll Smith II, the Oscar-winning, BAFTA- and Grammy-winning actor and rapper who enjoyed a stellar, uninterrupted career from the late 1980s until 2022, when he rocked things by attacking Oscars host Chris Rock for insulting Smith’s wife. This was followed by a violinist filing a lawsuit against him for predatory conduct, wrongful termination and retaliation, which is now making its way through California’s legal system. Smith has categorically denied all accusations. He’s getting away from it all in the meantime by going on all the adventures mentioned above – a set of episodes of Pole to Pole with Will Smith (the name we know him by, of course) in honor of his late mentor Dr. Allen Counter. Kaunter was a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, the inaugural director of the university’s Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, and in his spare time, I think? – Famous explorer. I can’t help but feel that there must be a biopic in the works, and I hope it comes soon.

But back to Smith and his seven continents. The series is produced by National Geographic and has all the visual polish and sweeping grandeur you’d expect. It doesn’t rest on the laurels of its star host. Every moment feels wonderful or exciting. The parts where Smith speaks into the camera are less interesting – why has no one ever offered a script for these things that at least attempts to match the standards reached elsewhere? But in the field, he’s a great companion: charismatic, funny (“They might be a little crazy,” he notes after the news that he will visit three Brazilian climate scientists who have spent months alone at a small research station in West Antarctica. “And we have to be prepared for that,” he says after the news that he will be visiting three Brazilian climate scientists who have spent months alone at a small research station in West Antarctica. “And we have to be prepared for that,” he continues. “What’s our evacuation plan if they start tripping?”), honest in his astonished reactions and seemingly genuinely fascinated by his (really wonderful) companions.

In the three episodes available for review, they include former Welsh rugby star and (current) Polar athlete Richard Parkes (who has to restrain Smith when he starts dancing on the ice sheet they’re skiing across on their way to the Antarctic – “the environment doesn’t support life… there’s very little margin for error”), Heitor Evangelista (one of the Brazilian scientists, not ‘mad’, but it’s very clear that’s not life for everyone) and toxicologist Professor Brian Fry. Fry takes Smith 60 meters (200 feet) to the top of a tall-looking tree in the Amazon rainforest to show him the amazing view (“There’s no hospital as far as I can see,” says Smith) and then takes him 60 meters underground, on an expedition led by Ecuadorian climber Carla Pérez, to caves inhabited by what are likely to be many new species, hidden from prying eyes and subject to unique evolutionary influences, which she hopes will Be new sources. Medications and treatments for many of the things that continue to ail us. “Give me a second,” says Smith, who hates bugs and spiders, as the nameless little monsters skate across the floor and up the walls, “to get my movie star face back.” In the next episode, Fry and Perez take him anaconda hunting. Smith also hates snakes. Attaboy.

There are definitely some scenes that are uplifting, but they are less terrifying than they might be. Fry explains that this was partly motivated by survivor’s guilt after emerging from a meningitis bout “as mildly affected as possible” (although he had to learn to walk again due to muscle loss, leaving him permanently deaf in one ear) and Parks speaks briefly and poignantly about thinking “the worst thoughts” during his deepest depression after his rugby career was cut short by a sudden injury, and how discovering the desolate beauty of the polar regions helped him begin to recover. And Smith is an unexpectedly warm and attentive listener. It’s a lovely combination, and makes Pole to Pole a celebrity documentary, an honorable exception to the usual dross that passes through the commissioning crowd.