Comedian Billy Connolly is following in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook by navigating the Northwest Passage for a new television series.

He is currently negotiating the 3,200-mile Arctic route that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He will spend two months travelling by boat, plane, truck and train to journey along the North Canadian coast inside the Arctic Circle.

The journey is being filmed for a four-part series for ITV called Billy Connolly: Journey To The Edge of the World, due to be screened next year.

The series is a departure for Connolly, who has had a long association with the BBC through his successful World Tour series, which saw him visit every corner of the UK as well as New Zealand. He also filmed a documentary for the corporation in 1996 called A Scot In the Arctic where he spent a week alone in the Arctic Circle. His most successful film role came opposite Dame Judi Dench in Mrs Brown, which was made by BBC Films.

ITV approached Connolly as part of its drive to get more factual “big access pieces” for the 8pm-9pm slots following on from the success of documentaries on JK Rowling and Madeleine McCann.

Connolly, 65, was immediately taken with the idea of revisiting the Arctic.

“I have a personal liking for the Arctic since I was there before,” he said. “I love the silence; I didn’t know what silence was until I went there. There is a breadth and a height to the Arctic that just has to be seen, felt and heard to be believed.

“It is the most extraordinary corner of the world. It’s every bit as dramatic as going deep into water, it’s every bit as foreign as that when you find yourself confronted with enormous space and a silence that you think you can hear.

“I like the people who live there and I like the world. I like the positive side of the world, I like to see the world chugging along the way it should be.”

He will visit a series of Canadian regions on the route to observe life and culture and has already made a stop at an annual Highland Games festival in New Brunswick. He will be staying at trading posts, Inuit villages and hostels used as stopovers for people venturing to the North Pole.

The route he is travelling was sought by explorers for five centuries and claimed hundreds of lives, but global warming has made the passage more accessible in the summer months. In 1579, Drake and his crew attempted to find a western opening to the passage but were forced to turn back because of freezing weather.

The Northwest Passage was not conquered by sea until 1906, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen completed a three-year voyage in a converted 47-ton herring boat called Gjøa.

With a crew of eight people, Connolly set off from Nova Scotia last week. He will travel north and through the Northwest Passage until he reaches the Pacific.

His journey means he will be unable to fulfil his role as laird of the Lonach Highland Games near his family home at Candacraig, Aberdeenshire. His wife Pamela is expected to stand in for him at the event on August 23.

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