Small-screen journeys

In the Arctic wilderness of Kong Karls Land, east of Spitsbergen, Norway, a polar bear slowly emerges from her winter’s slumber, poking first her head and then her lumbering body from a winter snow den.

Two cubs awkwardly follow behind her. It is spring, time to find cracks in the ice to hunt for seals.

This rare and poignant scene isn’t something you can see on a tour, but an amazing sight you can witness on television.

Starting next Sunday and continuing through April 22, you can view “Planet Earth” as you’ve never seen it – in an 11-part series aired on five consecutive Sundays on the Discovery Channel.

While the series, produced by the BBC, is billed as natural history, anyone with the slightest yen to travel will be mesmerized by the high-definition filming of the Earth from pole to pole, capturing the beauty of deserts, jungles, mountains, rain forests, great plains and ocean depths.

You’ll see breathtaking panoramas of the Himalayas during a search for snow leopards. You’ll almost feel the oppressive heat in a Papua New Guinea rain forest as a filmmaker captures a blue bird of paradise in his preening courtship ballet.

It’s clear that a lot of us can’t get enough of travel. We’re hopelessly hooked.

A week or two of vacation is a tease, like having one or two hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party. But a short vacation is all that many of us can afford. For the remainder of the year, travel has to be vicarious.

Newspaper travel sections and travel magazines, for sure, can whet our appetites.

But, ah, virtual travel. Plop down on the sofa, click the remote and instantly be transported to places we’ve never seen or heard of – or, perhaps be delighted to learn more about places we’ve been.

Without question, the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth” gives all of us a jaw-dropping education.

But, there are other venues, too: Travel Channel and HDNet, to name a couple.

The Travel Channel, as its name implies, is nearly all travel all the time. Not all the shows are fresh, but the channel carries about 400 hours a year of original content, said Michael Klein, Travel Channel’s vice president-production.

“When we’re choosing projects and destinations, we’re looking at different ways of covering them,” Klein says. “We try to find ways to engage our audience and give them an introspective look at each place that we feature.”

Indicative of that is Travel Channel’s newest series, “1,000 Places to See Before You Die,” based on Patricia Schultz’s top-selling travel book. The series, which won’t actually cover 1,000 places, will premiere March 29 and continue every Thursday through June.

The series centers on the travels of Albin and Melanie Ulle, 30-something newlyweds from Colorado who were chosen from among 900 couples to take a 14-week trip to some 13 countries.

In high definition, the couple tour Alaska, Peru, Mexico, France, Italy, India, Nepal, Cambodia, Australia and Hawaii. Cameras capture their impressions, but details come from a narrator, guides and factoids imprinted into scenes.

In an ongoing, popular Travel Channel feature, “Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown,” Brown talks to local experts for insider information. Her new season, “Passport to Latin America,” premieres June 7 and covers Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico.

For foodies with a strong stomach and a taste for the offbeat, “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” which premiered Feb. 26, will take you to markets and kitchens in Morocco, Spain, the Philippines, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, China, Mongolia and Tibet, as well as more conventional destinations such as New York City, Alaska and Australia.

HDNet – available via DIRECTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable – carries mainly sports, music and entertainment, but has one original travel-oriented show, “Get Out,” with a predominantly active outdoor theme.

Its highlight DVD shows lithe young women donning wet suits to view sharks from a protective cage off Ganssbaai, South Africa; swimming with dolphins in Cancun, Mexico; and bungee jumping in Australia and New Zealand.

Local color is secondary to the extreme activities featured in the show, hosted by model Lindsay Clubine.