You won’t see trailers for Magnetic North (BBC Two). But the BBC should be proud of this beautifully directed, intelligent series about the concept and landscape of “the North”, presented by – and this word is not used lightly – the dude that is Jonathan Meades. Meades, formerly a writer and restaurant critic for The Times, is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly in to-day’s landscape of banality-spouting idenitkit presenters.

He started his journey in the bare beachside town of Kuhlungshorn on the German Baltic coast. You knew Magnetic North was going to be special because Luke Cardiff (credited with “photography”) and the director Francis Hanly immediately evoked the open skies and barren beaches that Meades would later lyrically describe. The presenter was introduced, not chirruping away aiming at the lowest common denominator, but in suede shoes and rumpled blue suit and shades, immediately defining – in toff scattergun – the idea of North against the idealised South, which was characterised by “dreams of speedboats, exuberant vines, guiltless hedonism”.

The spirit of the North, in contrast, was contrary, misanthropic: “To be northern is to be forever ill at ease with oneself”. In the French department of Nord, Meades mouthed heartily the words of Pierre Bachelet’s Les Corons: “The north was back to backs/The earth was made of coal.” Coal was smeared all over his face as he stalked in front of slag-heaps.

Meades somehow made his essay as elegant on television (an inelegant medium, especially around big ideas) as it would have been in print. In Flanders he looked at Gothic architecture and tossed out wonderful musings on herring: the predominant foodstuff for thousands of miles around, he noted that road builders in Flanders said the first layer of top soil held the bones of First World War servicemen, the second herringbones. Meades is as engaged with art as he is food, so went from pickled, soused and fermented herring to the meanings of northern art, revealing the likes of Bosch revelled in the surreal, dark, artificial and gloomy – under Bosch’s brush, “Heaven was a doggers’ paradise”.

Meades identified that northern churches were the first to strip out the amulets and excesses of organised religion and in their place a Gothic template was installed – all gargoyles and outer carvings. The paintings that first capture these stripped-down churches show buildings whose first function – as realised on the canvas with images of people talking or laughing – was not necessarily worship. The naughty North, you see.

Meades was a wonderful guide: dragged up (but somehow not too stupidly) as a monk, he showed us the history of brewing. He asked one off-licence worker which favourite beer he would drink before he died. With Hogarth’s Gin Lane as a backdrop, Britain’s love affair with intoxification was sketched.

He makes no capitulation to television: he thinks and speaks densely. If you lose him just remain pleasurably bamboozled. It’s fun to see him on the balcony of his ivory tower holding forth, because a moment later he’s in the red light district of Hamburg, neon light flashing across his omni-worn sunglasses, advancing the case of a city that brazenly celebrates the sex trade.

For the few of us who favour rain and gusty winds over summer warmth, mountains over beaches, and deathly wide and bracing open spaces (in Norfolk, northern England, or northern Scotland) with their biting winds and open vistas, this was an absorbing, wonderful half hour. Join us weirdoes: go North for your next mini-break. Take sunglasses.

After the wearying Battle for Jerusalem, another unfocused, unfulfilling Storyville (BBC Four). Flipping Out: Israel’s Drug Generation was, I think, supposed to be an intimate and (dread word) quirky view of young soldiers who leave the Israeli Army and go to India to get off their faces on drugs. Was the point that the soldiers were so unhappy or broken by their experience they were smoking shedloads of cannabis? If so, it was a point invalidated by the testimonies of the soldiers who said they had quite enjoyed army life, and by their rudeness towards the Indian people whose countryside they were cluttering up with their drug-taking.

Out of the box

— The latest from the frontline of the battle for on-Demand viewers . . . figures for the BBC’s hit iPlayer on-Demand service suggest that in three months, requests for downloads totalled a whopping 42 million. In response, BSkyB has enhanced its Sky Anytime PC service, giving it the catchy new name Sky Player (where did they get that idea?). NonSky subscribers will now have the chance to buy and watch Sky One hits such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica on-line, along with Sky Sports highlights and History Channel/National Geographic shows, but (as yet?) no BBC content.

— Channel 4’s cult comedy Peep Show, starring Robert Webb and David Mitchell as wretched loser flatmates, will get a sixth series. Broadcast reports that co-creator Jesse Armstrong says the format was “naturally designed” to run for ever.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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