Michael Palin sets off across the Sahara, one of the most inhospitable places on earth. His journey starts in Morocco, among the seedy backstreets of Tangier and the dye vats of Fez, with so much luscious photography that you want to record and keep stopping the film.

Palin, laid-back, amiable, eccentric and always ready to be surprised by what he finds, makes a good guide to the little-known edges of the great desert: the hospitable Berber peoples of the Atlas Mountains; the Polisario Front, pursuing a long war with Morocco; the iron ore mines of Mauritania; the Paris-Dakar rally. The series obeys the rules of travelogue, with the camera crew managing to be both invisible and ubiquitous. A warning: don’t imitate Palin’s attempts at speaking French.