At home on the range

By GREG DIXON

You just knew that Michael Palin was waiting to ask it of someone. And all too soon, within minutes of his new show Himalaya With Michael Palin starting last week (TV One, 8.35pm), he found his opportunity.

"What brings you up the Khyber today?" the television traveller inquired of some unsuspecting fellow from Dubai as they sat on a train on the Khyber Pass Railway. What the bloke from Dubai said didn't matter a jot. Palin, a former Python, had got in his ancient comedy reference for himself - and anyone else who cared.

He was of course referring to the 1968 movie, considered one of the better of the Carry On comedy series, called Up The Khyber, which has Kenneth Williams as the Khazi of Kalabar, a local warlord who plans to attack the pass held by the British in the form of Sid James' Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond and his troop of Scottish soldiers, the Third Foot And Mouth regiment.

Yes, very silly. One for, well, the trainspotters really.

And nothing new. This is the sixth of Palin's television journeys - lucky him, it's been a sort of accidental career - that's taken him around the world in 80 days, from pole to pole, to the Sahara and now to the place which, in Sanskrit, means "the abode of the snow". And each time, and whatever country he happens to pass through, Palin delivers more or less the same.

Fair enough. Palin has developed a winning blueprint. First you select a contrived-yet-interesting theme such as travelling the length of the Himalaya, then you give it a catchy title (Pole To Pole) or make sure your brand (Michael Palin) is in the name.

Next you get to travel about meeting strange folk in far-flung parts and make your little jokes before playing the series to huge audiences.

Lastly, of course, you produce the book of the series, which you make sure is on shop shelves everywhere by Christmas.

But as Palin and the bloke from Dubai made their way by train from the Pakistani end of the Pass to the town of Darra in last week's first episode of Himalaya, I found myself not minding that Palin's travel series are formulaic. The man is a tremendously good travelling companion, with an easy charm. And his journey here will take viewers from one end of the Himalaya range to the other through Pakistan, China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Assam and Bangladesh - damned interesting territory by anyone's measure.

Palin has a good writer's deft touch with language, too. Instead of filling his narration with the dull platitudes or banal observations of programmes like Getaway (and the worst episodes of Intrepid Journeys), he gives each scene - last week, the gun shops of Darra, the dental markets of Peshawar, bull racing and a polo match in the high Shandur Pass - something more than just good footage of a beautiful or remarkable place.

Formulaic or not in approach, he brings a careful eye for the interesting and the odd, a wry wit and a self-deprecating sense of humour to these shows - rarities on television of any kind.

So yes, Palin has little in-jokes. Yes, there's always the sense we've been here before even if we haven't. But you'd have to travel a long way to find a travel show that's quite so good.