Preview Screening and Discussion: Russia – A Journey, with Jonathan Dimbleby FULLY BOOKED

To coincide with the landmark BBC series, Frontline Club presents a unique opportunity to preview Episode Four and hear the people behind the programme talk about the challenges of undertaking such a big project.

The five-part series, follows Jonathan Dimbleby as he makes an epic journey from one end of Russia to the other in this first comprehensive look at a country shrouded in myth. 

Starting from the Arctic port of Murmansk, he makes his way through forests and lakes, over mountain passes and windswept steppe, mighty rivers and frozen plains, until he reaches Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

Travelling by no means as the crow flies, he covers some ten thousand miles by train, bus, boat, car, horse and the occasional plane in these compelling programmes. His route follows the contours left by history on this vast land; deserted gulags, ancient churches, battlefields, graveyards, cherry orchards, and collective farms. But primarily it is a journey to the heart of today’s Russia, with all its contrasts, charms and dangers.

At one end of the spectrum are cities bursting with energy from the sudden influx of new wealth. But drive a hundred miles from their choking traffic and you are in a different world where the villages are dying and the surviving families scratch a living form the land pretty much as their forebears did under the tsars.

Episode four sees Jonathan explore Siberia and where the northernmost edges of the country meet the Arctic Circle.