Let’s face it – we all thought that Michael Palin had done the world. Sahara, Himalaya, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Around the World in Eighty Days and his Hemingway Adventure, which knocked off England, American and the Caribbean in one whisky-drinking, fish-catching, wife-shooting swoop. Palin has even done Fort William to Kyle of Lochalsh on Great Railway Journeys, so, surely, that has to be the lot. There is nowhere left for Palin to run to. Or stroll around, in BBC chinos, looking a little crumpled and bemused.

But look! Eastern Europe! We had all forgotten about Eastern Europe! No one has ever done Eastern Europe!

Palin’s pulled a whole new bit of the world out of the bag! Albeit a bit of the world with Albania in it. I think that when we heard about Palin’s new project we were resigned to it not being the most . . . transportative piece of prime-time travelogue. Even though we have never seen it, we know Eastern Europe’s bag.

Tractors, rotting concrete, potato festivals, women who look like shot-putters. Rain. No lions, peyote or camel-trains laden with lady beans, star nuts and musk pods here. We were just going to have to take this one on the chin because we love Palin.

Except that the whole point of New Europe is to issue a slightly smug “urmgggh!” sound – a sound that means: “I bet you weren’t expecting that, viewer-kind.” Palin starts off the series with some wheeling-eagle shots of him on the peak of the magnificent Julian Alps, looking like a one-man recreation of The Fellowship of the Ring. He then quickly relocates to a sunny quayside in Croatia, surrounded by bougainvillea, white yachts, café tables and holiday seas. Knocking off Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Albania in the first episode, Palin seeks to challenge the Western view of Eastern Europe – that basically it is a lot like Hull, but somehow worse. He hopes to reintroduce it as somewhere full of sunshine, beautiful ladies, pagan ritual, techno DJs, sheep sacrifice and interesting liqueurs.

Twenty minutes in, he is doing a good job – hitching a lift to Albania, in a yacht captained by a Serbian opera star who has just scored a hit as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. Palin sits on the Adriatic, eating anchovies in fresh olive oil and drinking white wine so cold his glass has gone frosty.

Unfortunately, the captain “doesn’t really want to go” to Albania, and sees the whole programme as a chance for him to audition for X-Factor. He raises only his smallest sail, and sings the presenter all the way to Tirana, accompanied by Palin’s exquisitely pained expression.

Of course, in these days of Blue Peter phone-in scandals and Jodie Marsh’s fake wedding, who knows how much of this is true, and how much is prurient direction and editing? Any too-perfect scene of amusement falls under suspicion. I guess that the best proof of how truly European “New Europe” is will come if the captain watches the show, and then sends an angry letter to The Guardian in a week’s time explaining how the whole scene was faked.

More Englishmen abroad with Millionaires’ Mission. Here, eight “entrepreneurs” – always a rather suspicious descriptor, like “farm fresh” or “Vernon Kay” – fly out to Uganda for three weeks to see if their entrepreneurial skills can transform life in an impoverished village. A soundtrack suspiciously like that of The Apprentice makes it quite clear that the “ground-breaking form of aid-giving” aspect is of less importance than the “getting eight stroppy, self-made millionaires to bicker while slapping mosquitoes from their necks” aspect. Personality wise, there is an immediate clash between Steve Morgan (“worth £16 million”, as the caption briskly puts it), who wants to install a waterpipe, and the rest of the group, who want to open a hotel! Yes, of course – a hotel!

Still, it is mad horses for mad courses. On convening a meeting with the villagers to discuss ideas, the entrepreneurs are confused and slightly narked when only three people turn up. Their local connection – an aid worker called Rudo – cautions them that it is “totally wrong to say [to the villagers]: ‘Time is short, you have to turn up on time’.”

I fear that, in a culture in which hierarchy and time-keeping are supposedly nugatory concepts, a hotel – what with its alarm-calls, managers and shifts – might be a slightly misplaced proposition.

Michael Palin’s New Europe, Sun, BBC One, 9pm; Millionaires’ Mission, Wed, Channel 4, 9pm Caitlin Moran’s TV columns now have a new online home at www.timesonline.co.uk/caitlin

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