The Greenland Ice Cap is 15,000m (more than nine miles) deep, scoured by 150mph winds, and habitually reaches temperatures of minus 40C (-40F). “Nothing can live here,” the voiceover informed us, dolefully, over shots of decidedly non-fertile snow.

Into this situation comes the Tribe presenter Bruce Parry, who intends to spend the next two months re-creating Captain Scott’s journey to the South Pole. You know the one — the one he died on. Sweet suffering Mary, but does Parry never just have a week in Provence? Mini-break in Barcelona? Long weekend in New York? In Tribe, Parry devoted his time to walking to remote African villages and subsisting on meagre yet still- vile cups of fibrous, clotted cattle- blood, and water with flies in it.

And now, in Blizzard: Race to the Pole (BBC Two, Sunday) — clearly eager for some kind of break — he spends his time falling through rotten ice, and eating cups of hot lard with flecks of husky crap in it. Despite his otherwise sterling attributes as Potential Future Husband Material — cheerful, brave, strong, handsome, wry, called “Bruce” — you would fear what his idea of a romantic weekend away would consist of. Maybe it would be pot-holing in a hole called The Hole of Death. I suspect nice shoes and cocktails probably wouldn’t come into it.

Still, aside from — or maybe because of — Parry’s psychotic appetite for deprivation, Blizzard is a hoot. The plot is very simple: it’s a race! With two teams — Brits v Norwegians — so diametrically opposed that Hollywood could have scripted them.

Roald Amundsen, we learn, was a wily old bird who copied Inuit methods for Antarctic survival, and so the modern Norwegian team follow his cue in seal-furs. Scott, on the other hand, created an expedition that was like a tribute to the British Empire. Taking a crew that was half Royal Navy, half Cambridge scientists, they were dressed top-to-toe in woollens from Savile Row. And so the modern-day British team has been created in the same image.

On the first day, their husky- musher gets upset, in a very British way, about how beastly the locals are to their huskies. Soppily, he takes off their chains and attaches them to “nicer” ropes, instead. Immediately the dogs bite through the ropes, run away, and start fighting and copulating with each other.

So far — after two days — the British team has travelled a total of two miles, and spent most of their time a) hurling themselves at fighting dogs shouting “Oi!” or b) cleaning endless amounts of husky crap off the sledge runners. They have another month, and 1,000 miles of this before, presumably — if the show is to be accurate — dying in a blizzard. To be honest, it’s hard to see what the guys are getting out of it. The viewer, although entertained, won’t be able to understand a single aspect of their lifestyle. Apart from the “ten thousand high-calorie biscuits” Scott apparently had in his kit. Just like the British to try and conquer the Antarctic on Hobnobs.

Still, did you know that Scott’s middle name was Falcon? Or that Jesus’s real name was Joshua? The latter was one of the intriguing facts thrown up by The Miracles of Jesus (BBC One, Sunday). Well, actually, it was the only fact thrown up by The Miracles of Jesus.

This was a programme of such fluffiness that it would have made anyone — up to and including the Archbishop of Canterbury — shout “But have you got any science? Any facts? Anything other than re-creations of Middle Eastern peasants constantly hassling Jesus to sort something else out?”

The fact that it was fronted by Rageh Omaar didn’t help.

There aren’t many television personalities for whom a blithe lack of self-awareness is a handicap — by-and-large, the less they realize they’re idiots, the more hilarious it is for us — but Omaar really is the dizzy limit. I’ll never forget him fronting a wafer-thin show on the Iraq War — during the months he was the “Scud stud” — and opening it with the line “I want to ask you what you remember of the Iraq War? Was it shock and awe, or Jessica Lynch, or even the red and dusty skies?” like he was Richard bloody Burton reading Under Milk Wood.

Here he’s just as moony and portentous — reverently trailing his hand over ancient Hebrew texts, staring out to seas where Jesus might have been, and posing with one foot up on a boulder, crotchily. Omaar! You’re a news reporter! You can’t say things like “Who’s to say it wasn’t a miracle?” If you think the miracles of Jesus are anything other than metaphorical hogwash, then you need to be presenting a show called How Every Scientific Achievement of the Last 500 Years Must be Wrong!

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