“When Bruce goes, I will cry.” These are the touching last words of a diminutive indigenous babe from the northwest corner of the Amazon basin. She is one of that remote region’s fun-loving, monkey-killing Matis people, and she is talking about the former Royal Marine insaniac and doe-eyed hard man Bruce Parry. Yet, strangely, I know exactly how she feels. For Parry, back to spearhead season three of his sado-masochistic travelogue Tribe (BBC Two), is a beguiling presence, a bona fide star, and a moving reminder of a tough yet taciturn masculinity that’s all but extinct in our touchy-feely gender-non-specific times.

The set-up, by now, is achingly familiar. Parry lands in remote spot, meets suspicious tribal elders, gets injected with jumba-wamba juice, trips out, vomits and defecates wildly, is accepted into the tribe and finally goes home refreshed and confident in the knowledge that the world’s indigenous peoples are, like, special and stuff. This time was no different.

The Matis people were sceptical at first, but after pouring searing tree sap into his eyes, beating him with nettles, and stabbing him with puke-inducing poison-tipped forks, they decided that he was their kind of gringo. As a reward Parry was taken on a rites-of-passage hunting trip that turned out to be something of a minor massacre – 11 woolly monkeys, six spider monkeys and a vast array of jungle fauna were blow-darted to death in the name of a midweek protein hit. Not that our hero was bothered by the ethics of jungle genocide. He simply stared down as his own fallen fluffy primate and mused, “Out of 20 shots I may have got just two into him!”

And that’s exactly why Tribe works. For Parry, despite his bed-fresh bonce, salt’n’pepper stubble and warm dimpled smile, is an unreconstructed hero straight out of a Howard Hawks western. He is tough, seemingly uncomplicated, has moments of levity and compassion, but mostly he’s just here to get the job done. His paternalistic presence, in fact, is so compelling that you almost forget that you’re watching obscene postcolonial pygmy tourism masquerading as eco-entertainment. While, ultimately, his grip is so assured that he makes you forget that Tribe is fundamentally Dirty Sanchez for grown-ups, complete with skin-piercing antics and vomit-splattered money shots, but without the expletives and beer.

Amir Khan’s Angry Young Men (Channel 4), on the other hand, was Dirty Sanchez for makeover fans, complete with vomit-splattered money shots, expletives and beer. For reasons presumably known only to himself, and a couple of disingenuous producers, the lightweight boxing champ Khan decided to take (and cue voiceover) “six volatile youths with a history of violent behaviour and use the discipline of boxing to channel their aggression and turn their lives around”. Which eventually translated to dreary footage of six narcissistic dolts suffering from various degrees of psychopathology, binge-drinking, barfing and boasting about burglaries while Khan spoke softly to camera about his totally unrealistic plans for their futures. The boys did a bit of training, got sweaty and complained, but the humanistic makeover was a feint from the start. Forcing our six hotheads to live in a tiny booze-sodden Bolton bedsit was typical of the show’s leering instincts and surely akin to dropping a pound of PCP and a couple of Uzis into a crack-house just to see, like, what happens.

Finally, making that often revealing transition from digital to terrestrial telly has exposed even greater cracks in the overhyped and undercooked teen drama Skins (Channel 4). The show, allegedly about the life of some zany, fun-loving sixth formers in Bristol, is a depressing pastiche of teen movie clichés, about as faithful to the modern British adolescent condition as a week with the Matis nettle-whackers, and speaks only of a weirdly Oedipalised male fantasy world where horny mothers stand naked in windows, sexy music teachers are gagging for underage action, and the blank-eyed Nicholas Hoult can seduce a room of lobotomised posh totty with a creepy and decidedly flat rendition of On the Street Where You Live. The big pitch from Channel 4, of course, is that the entire series is devised and produced by 22-year-olds. But 22-year-old what? Woolly monkeys? If so, we know where to send Parry on his next mission.

Self-promoting entertainment mogul Simon Cowell’s bid for complete and utter media domination continues with the much heralded announcement of his new American Idomovie. Based on the long-running TV series, Star Struck will be about the fabulous journey of ten lucky contestants who, well, sorry, but you can imagine the rest. Cowell, however is undaunted by the idea that Idol-fever might be finally flagging in the hearts of talent-show saturated consumers – a recent Idol-inspired Broadway show, Idol: The Musical, flopped after just one night, because of a punishing lack of interest. The answer to keeping audiences keen, according to Cowell, is to make sure that you keep it real. “It’s going to be like Rocky,” he’s said. “It’s about good versus evil. And it will be very very realistic.” Because, let’s face it, it doesn’t get any more realistic than Rocky, does it?

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