Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6179 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-23
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 360 minutes

Customer Reviews

Absolutely Excellent
Alongside 'Tribe', 'Blizzard' was one of the best television programmes of 2006 - the fact that it's now on DVD is a cause for celebration, but come on - when will 'Tribe' be released!

Bruce Parry - who seems to have carved a rather unique niche for himself in television as a man willing to do almost anything, and suffer, for our entertainment and education - leads the British team against the Norwegian team in a reconstruction of the ill-fated final journey of Capatin Scott's journey to the South Pole. Although we know that Bruce and his team probably aren't going to die - they come close. And the reconstruction is absolutely vital in understanding what went wrong and what went right for the respective teams and why the Norwegians won the South Pole in the first place, as Scott and his men died a miserable death.

Along with the documentary footage of the 2006 teams, there's also a nice retrospective quality to the programme that chronicles Captain Scott as told by his critics and admirers, drawing eerie comparisons between his original trip and the eforts of the 2006 Brits.

The episodes are fast moving, showing the teams at their best (and worst) as they suffer awful food, loss of team members, loss of morale and loss of weight. The difference in the Brits body mass before and after the trip is incredible.

It's an essential DVD. It's educational, it's gripping, it's exhausting and you won't be dissapointed. Highly recommended!

Inspirational TV !
Brilliantly shot with incredible photography of Greenland, but also the non-intrusive way the camera crew manages to follow the teams such that the sense of isolation remains.

An incredible story that is brilliantly re-constructed by Bruce et al and it really does give a sense of what it may have been like for Scott and his team.

A highly recommended addition to any DVD library.

Excellent recreation of the Scott's vain attempt to be the first person to the South Pole
Before the end of WW2, Robert Falcon Scott was regarded as a true British hero. With courage & determination his party tackled the quest to be the first to the South Pole. The fact that they attempted to man haul their supplies over 2000 kms was regarded as proof of the British spirit. The post imperial world has been less kind to Scott. What to many, including the current reviewer, he represents is an amateurish attempt by a deeply flawed person from a leadership perspective to attempt a walk of 2000 miles.

While it might be argued that Amundsen undoubtedly had luck on his side, the facts speak for themselves. The speed of Scott's party was half that of the Norwegians. Scott himself compounded their difficulties through a series of inane decisions. Apocryphally it is claimed that the Norwegians actually gained weight over the duration of the expedition whilst the British party on the other hand slowly starved to death whilst also suffering from the effects of scurvy & frost bite. The cumulative effect of all these miscalculations was the untimely death of five British men in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica.

What this DVD attempts to do, is to recreate the conditions that Scott's team would have experienced albeit that the duration would only be 90 days & the location being Greenland. Using the equipment & the methods employed by each party, they attempt to ascertain whether the failure of Scott's team was due to being unlucky or due to the culmination of a series of errors.

What this DVD does not cover is role of Scott's wife Kathleen, an arrogant conniving individual, who given a different age would have been a member of the polar expedition itself. It was she who stoked the vanity of Scott in her assertions about his greatness. Neither does this DVD cover the intrigues surrounding Scott's relationship with Shackleton. This DVD strictly focuses on the Antarctic attempt itself.


In the first episode all the team members are introduced. Although it is not made explicitly clear whether it was intentional or not, the British team is under trained for the task at hand just like Scott's was. In fact the team leader admits to only having done 2 hours training in the previous 3 months. Nothing like making the challenge more daunting! But then in 1911, the British were masters of the world with an innate sense of their own superiority.

It is admitted that the decision to man haul their supplies even though it was forced on them due to a series of calamities with first the tractors after only two days, and then ponies within a week & ultimately Scott's decision to curtail the use of the dogs actually was a conflation of Scott's world view - the additional challenge proved that the British were made of sterner & hardier stuff than the other peoples.

The Norwegian party on the other hand was led by a professional focused man in Amundsen. His experiences with the Inuits some years before had taught him a number of life saving tips regarding clothing & dogs.

Overall an excellent DVD. It provides much valuable insight into whether it was sheer bad luck that Scott did not survive. One becomes grimly aware that Scott would never have succeeded just like this team never succeeded.