Endurance: Race to the Pole

In episode one, it's 1901 and the start of the Great Age of Antarctic Exploration. Stepping forward to lead Britain's three-year-long "Discovery" Expedition to Antarctica, and hopefully reach the South Pole was Captain Robert Falcon Scott. His is one of the best equipped and financed expeditions yet, and alongside Scott is a fresh-faced new recruit: Ernest Shackleton.

We follow as Ben and Dwayne land in Antarctica and transition from modern polar explorers into their historical clothes and take on the mantle of their Edwardian forebears.

Within days they are setting off with faithfully recreated equipment and rations on their own journey trying to experience the key moments of that first attempt at the pole. Scott and Shackleton used dogs but without success, in the end hampering their efforts. As non-indigenous species are no longer allowed in Antarctica Ben and Dwayne have to resort to good old-fashioned man hauling, dragging a wooden "Nansen" sled and all the kit they need to survive in Antarctica behind them. It's back breaking and mind-numbing work, but worse is to come as they pitch their replica tent for the first time on the frozen barren ice fields.

They plan to live on the same rations, making the famed polar dish of "Hoosh" for breakfast and dinner: a fatty stew made from dried beef, rendered beef fat and rock-hard ships biscuits all mushed up into melted snow.

Scott made valiant efforts to reach for the Pole and ultimately set a new world record for the furthest South any person had ever gone into the heart of Terra Incognita, as Antarctica was known, but ultimately, he failed and had to stop many hundreds of kilometers from the pole.

Episode two picks up where Scott had turned back, as Shackleton - now Scott's rival - returns to Antarctica as a seasoned polar explorer with his own "Nimrod" Expedition. His bold plan: to reach the South Pole and claim it for King and Country.

We join Ben and Dwayne as they pass Scott's previous furthest south and forge ahead on their own journey trying to relive the key moments from Shackleton's second foray into the great white wilderness. But now Shackleton and his three-man team face the biggest challenge yet, the formidable and unexplored Trans Antarctic Mountain Range, they finally settle on a 160km route climbing up the treacherous Beardmore Glacier. Ben and Dwayne take on their own ice mountain challenge, facing steep slippery waves of blue ice, deadly crevasses and relentless hauling up steep slopes to try to reach the barren and seemingly endless Polar Plateau.

Here both Shackleton, and Ben and Dwayne, face the worst weather and new challenges, as temperatures sink to mind numbing -40C with windchill and ferocious winds threaten to stop them in their tracks. After 73 days on the ice, Shackleton and his men are on their last legs and Shackleton, who is only 150km from the South Pole, makes the momentous decision to turn back and head home, in doing so he saved his men and his own life but gave up his dream of being the first person to reach the South Pole.

With the South Pole still up for grabs, Scott sets off on his next attempt to claim the pole; the "Terra Nova" Expedition. Scott is chomping at the bit. He tried so hard on his first expedition, nearly lost out as Shackleton swooped in just two years previously, but ultimately failed. Now, the door is wide open for Scott and his team, the pole must be his. But a new pretender to the throne arrives. Norwegian Roald Amundsen announces his plan to take the pole at the last minute, and for Scott his expedition has now become a race – a deadly race.

Ben and Dwayne drag their kit across the Polar plateau in fierce storms as Scott and his team did, but for Scott arriving at the Pole was a desperate and wretched moment as they discovered that they had been beaten by the Norwegian - and by a full month. Scott's dreams were shattered, and he and his team now faced the long journey home hauling their kit back all the thousands of kilometres they had already walked. As they headed home, their travails only increase as unseasonal weather turned against them, their rations running low and one by one they start to die in the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

Ben and Dwayne find moments to lift their spirts as they recreate the sailing that turned Scott's sled into a ‘Heath Robinson boat'. But ultimately, Scott, who had now been out on the ice for nearly five months, was beaten not just to the South Pole but by Antarctica, as he and his two remaining team mates were tent bound just 11 miles from salvation and lay down to their deaths on the ice. In an emotive farewell Ben and Dwayne rebuild a memorial cairn to their heroes.