Clinton News-Record, 1974-10-03, Page 39VIB FAMDLT Oala (ROBERT HOMO
PAGE 23
The search for the Nile
In the middle of the last century, when Britain
was at the height of her imperial power, an un-
solved mystery lay at the heart of Africa. That
mystery was the secret of the source of the Nile. The
challenge of solving the mystery was so great that it
brought out the best and the worst in all of them.
For many of them it became an obsession. THE
SEARCH FOR THE NILE, begins Sunday, Septem-
ber 29, at 9:00 p.m. on the Global Television Net-
work, is a six-part drama-documentary series
produced by the BBC in co-operation with Time
Inc., which details the exploits of these daring men
and their fascinating quest.
The series concentrates on five of the most
famous explorers - the brilliant and moody Richard
Burton, the ambitious soldier and adventurer 'John
Hanning Speke, the renowned missionary Dr.
Livingstone, American journalist Henry M. Stanley
and wealthy sportsman Samuel Baker. All of them
set out to discover the Nile's secret, hoping to carve
out a place for themselves in the history books. All
were compulsive writers, and in the series, much of
the dialogue is taken directly from their writings.
The explorers were, poles apart in all but their .
single great obsession, yet they all had the same
mixture of toughness and eccentricity that created
the Victorian heroes.
The most stubborn and strong-willed of these
heroes was Richard Burton, the brilliant scholar
and writer. His ill-fated expedition to Africa in 1856
with John Hanning Speke is detailed in the first two
episodes of THE SEARCH FOR THE NILE, and
the story of the subsequent feud between Speke and
Burton runs throughout the series. Another
highlight of the series is the re-creation of the
famous incident of Stanley's meeting with
Livingstone' when the immortal words "Dr.
Livingstone, I presume" were spoken. The location
scenes for the series were shot in Africa over a
period of five months.
The battles, the heroism, the betrayals and the
savagery in THE SEARCH FOR THE NILE have
all the hallmarks of fiction, but it is all true.