Clive Myrie's African Adventure (BBC2)

Rating:

Telly travelogues come in two main types. Some, like Michael Palin's immersive plunges into far-flung cultures or Stanley Tucci's foodie adventures, evoke the thrill of exploration.

Others, mostly those presented by comedians, are shallow, heavily scripted sightseeing excursions. 

The worst of them feature toilet humour, and motorhomes driven by Gordon Ramsay or Bradley Walsh.

Clive Myrie's African Adventure isn't quite as bad as that. But the first episode was traditional travel-by-numbers, and that's a great shame because it missed an opportunity to do something less formulaic.

This ten-part, nightly series opened in South Africa, where Clive was based as the BBC's Africa correspondent in the late 1990s. 

He could have given us a guided tour of his old haunts, talked about what it was like to live there, and taken us into the homes of ordinary people.

Instead, he stuck mostly to the tourist trail. Tonight and tomorrow, he'll be joining an anti-poaching squad that protects endangered rhinos, visiting a surf school, and helping out at the penguin rehab centre, before joining a circus to learn trapeze skills.

It's a lively and varied itinerary, but any experienced presenter could do that. If the Beeb sent Alison Hammond or Anton du Beke, you'd expect nothing different.

Apart from Clive's initial encounter, with former colleague Milton Nkosi, there was little to suggest this was home turf. 

The first half-hour was spent in Soweto, the township of around two million people in Johannesburg, and Clive headed straight for Tourist Central - Vilakazi Street, where Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu both lived.

He took a look at the Mandela museum, where the perimeter fence is designed to look like prison bars, before joining granddaughter Ndileka Mandela for lunch at a restaurant called 1947.

They tucked into Nelson's favourite meal, chicken with spicy vegetable chakalaka and braised oxtail. 'I think your grandfather would have been proud of this one,' burbled Clive.

Since Mandela overthrew an oppressive dictatorship in an almost bloodless revolution to free his people, it seems wincingly gauche to suggest he'd

also be 'proud' of a chicken dinner, but perhaps it really was that good.

That was far from the only trite line. 

The clumsiest was a link worthy of Alan Partridge. After riding in a stock car doing spins and donuts, Clive declared, 'I didn't expect to enjoy that quite as much as I did... but something I have always loved is art.' 

Then he set off for a lesson in painting street murals with spray paints.

The best segment was filmed at a car wash that doubles as a party venue for dance events. Soweto's current music craze is amapiano, a beat-heavy type of soulful jazz.

Clive picked up some nifty steps and, as he did in his 2024 Caribbean Adventure, demonstrated he can shake a leg.

Surely a season on Strictly beckons?