There exists, in a parallel universe, a version of Tribal Wives made by, say, RDF (Wife Swap, Shipwreck), and broadcast on Channel 4.

In it, white English women - selected almost wholly on the basis of how unlikeable, vexing, spoilt and shiny-haired they are - are dropped into the middle of remote tribes, to spend a month being a native wife, with “hilarious results”. Like the first half- hour of Private Benjamin, these women would yelp, whine, scream, have tantrums and weep when faced with leaves, mice, rain and soil, and for the first two weeks of their stay in the jungle, their dialogue would consist solely of “My hair's going frizzy!” “I'm not eating that!” and “I'm a chocoholic - I need my KitKats!”

After the second commercial break, though, this “special place” and these “special people” would start “to have an effect” on Sophia-Marie, 32, from Northants. Some manner of celebration would end in Sophia-Marie getting a bit drunk on local hooch, and dancing, and having a surprisingly good time until fade-out. There would be star-gazing in wonderment (“It makes you realise how small you really are”) and then some weeping revelation on wash-day. (“These people are so poor, but they share whatever they've got with each other. They've got something we've lost.”)

By the time we got to the credits, Sophia-Marie would undoubtedly be going home “a new me” - which would be confirmed by the fact she now had “natural-looking” hair, and wore a string of wooden beads, “to always remind me of this special place.”

It would be a regressive, clichéd, culturally ignorant, borderline racist piece of spiteful misogyny, and the tragedy is that I would probably watch it anyway, because it's like a reverse makeover, isn't it? And I love any and all makeovers - particularly Jordans being made over into Joni Mitchells, or Peaches Geldofs into the bastard daughters of Ray Mears. You've got to half-heartedly watch and tolerate that, then use it as the basis for subsequent pub discussions.

However, for once in our spacetime continuum, we find ourselves in the better parallel universe. Yes - not only are we in the reality where the Beatles didn't have a jazz-funk phase, but also the one where Tribal Wives is made not by Channel 4, but by the BBC, instead. And, indeed, the people at the BBC who brought us the clever, bold and intimate Tribe with Bruce Parry.

As a result, Tribal Wives is a satisfyingly warm and complex interpretation of what is, essentially, a stunt-TV idea. For starters, the “wives” aren't ludicrous, privileged, shallow, Western clichés. In the first two episodes, we meet Karen and Sass. Karen is a warm, earthy, single- mother businesswoman recovering from an abusive relationship. Sass, meanwhile - the star of the first episode - is a sunny, sturdy blonde, with inexplicably sad eyes, who volunteers to work with troubled teenagers since her own mother abandoned her when she was 13. You actually like the protagonists. You don't want them to fall off the log into the primitive jungle latrine, and be covered by swarming rats, and lie there, screaming, while the natives laugh “Ho ho ho! She is scared of our rats and poo! How funny!”

But where Tribal Wives really shows off its non-stupid chops is with the tribes themselves. As with Tribe before it, Tribal Wives doesn't present the natives as a collective mass of spiritually superior primitives, with funny food, scary toilets and tiny loin-cloths. The film-makers feel as at ease and familiar with the tribes as they are with the Western women. The Waorani of Ecuador and the Kuna of Panama are presented as the joking, teasing, stroppy, tearful, analytical equals of the white “stars”.

When Karen refuses to attend a Waorani celebration naked, her cackling friends chide her with, “Bopo! We all have vaginas! Take your pants off, or you'll be late for the party!”

And when Sass has a series of bad dreams about her mother abandoning her, her new tribal father, Diego, takes a day's journey to the mountains to make her bad-dream medicine. He returns, exhausted, at nightfall with the words, “It's for our girl. It's Sass's medicine,” which might actually make you cry a bit.

Given that, a couple of Daleks aside, our TVs are full of humans - millions of them, all piled on top of each other, all talking - Tribal Wives turns out to be that very rare thing: a programme about humans that shows you the humanity.

Tribal Wives, Wed, BBC Two, 9pm

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