Australian adventurer Tim Jarvis retraces English explorer Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 attempt to cross Antarctica in Shackleton: The Greatest Story of Survival.
The story of Ernest Shackleton is a well-known one, particularly that of his disastrous 1914 expedition to the Antarctic on a ship called - prophetically - the Endurance.
It's been told many times, including in a 1919 documentary produced by Shackleton himself and a TV miniseries starring Kenneth Branagh.
Among the many documentaries was one featuring Australian adventurer Tim Jarvis, as he retraced Shackleton's steps on the ill-fated Endurance.
Now Jarvis is doing it again, alternating Shackleton's story and actual footage from 1914 with his own present-day commentary.
You may ask why go over it all again, and that question is never quite satisfactorily answered. But it's been a while since I'd heard the story, and the film Shackleton managed to maintain my interest to the end.
And it can't be denied it may very well justify its subtitle: "The greatest story of survival".
Shackleton's voyage was already a sensation months before the Endurance set sail. Thousands had applied to join the crew, but in the end, just 28 were chosen. Many of them called Frank, for some reason.
Captain Frank Worsley drove the ship as close to the Antarctic continent as he could, all the time being filmed by a dare-devil cameraman called Frank Hurley.
But disaster struck. The ship became ice-bound, unable to go further or to go back. And this was where Ernest Shackleton showed his mettle.
He realised the mission had now changed - from exploration to survival and escape.
And modern-day explorer Tim Jarvis is uniquely the right man to imagine what Shackleton was thinking.
When it became clear they had to abandon ship, Shackleton had to decide what to take with them, how to ration food and critically, whether to drag three cumbersome lifeboats across the rough terrain.
The journey was unbelievably daunting. They lost their way more than once, and when they finally reached solid ground - Elephant Island - that was just the first step.
The worst was to come - a journey across the mountainous southern ocean in a cockleshell craft only built for the shortest of trips.
This documentary Shackleton is divided between two narrators - Jarvis, and the diary kept by Shackleton himself, which in many ways covers the extraordinary story without need of much embellishment.
But Tim Jarvis's commentary offers some insight into what motivates people to put themselves through such terrifying ordeals, and he also points out the effect of climate change over the past hundred years.
For instance, he reaches one spot where Shackleton couldn't land because a glacier reached right down to the coastline. Today the same spot is almost ice-free.
But Jarvis has another message in this film, as much about Shackleton's leadership style as about the undoubted courage and grit shown by the entire crew of the Endurance.
Shackleton made sure his crew never had a moment to dwell on their plight. He devised games, research projects, all sorts of things to do, and most important, tasks that could be achieved.
Shackleton led from the front, to a fault possibly - there was never any question who was in charge. But those were the qualities needed to get through a year and a half of one of the most daunting expeditions ever attempted.
Jarvis's final thesis - that we need the spirit of Shackleton to solve global warming - may be a bit of a long bow to draw, but he sells it pretty well in this account.
