Bruce Parry gets a hit of frog toxin Last night's terrestrial TV choices were: Victoria Hervey on the history of the Labour Party ("Don't Call me Stupid"), Jamie Oliver cooking new potatoes ("Jamie At Home") or raised temperatures in "Holby City".
Thank God, then, for Tribe, which is now in its third series. Bruce Parry's mission to seek out the most isolated communities on the planet has long been essential, if exhausting, viewing.
Already in the last few weeks Bruce has been dosed up with frog poison in the Amazon (top that, Pete Doherty), plunged his hand into an African beehive and, while travelling with the Nenets Tribe of Northern Siberia, encountered an atmosphere frostier than a Northern Rock shareholders meeting.
Not that he ever complains. A wiry former Marine who will muck in even if it means drinking blood from the carcass of a reindeer, Parry might almost be capable of spending a month in London during a tube strike.
Last night, Bruce hooked up with villagers of Laya in Bhutan, a mountain kingdom wedged between India and Tibet high in the Himalayas. Here he discovered that for the local Buddhist community, life was all about giving up on desire.
"A Buddha once said that all suffering comes from the wish for your own happiness," announced Bruce. For Parry - who would climb Everest naked if they'd only let him - this posed quite a conundrum.
"He finds it hard to express himself, and ends up talking nonsense," announced the local astrologer, clearly having heard one of Bruce's rambling pieces to camera.
Later, when he's forced by waist-high snow to abandon hopes of reaching Lunana - a colony of semi-nomadic yak herders isolated from the world for seven months of the year - the penny finally drops.
"I've realised life doesn't have to be about achieving your goals," gasped Bruce, before wrestling a yak to the floor and swigging from a mug of Yigatso Gimbo, the local aphrodisiac whisky.
Old habits die hard, then. But Parry's valiant efforts to wrestle meaning back into midweek TV remind you of Bill Hick's fantasy news bulletin: "There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream and you are the imagination of yourself. Here's Tom with the weather."
Afterwards, "Gavin and Stacey" didn't really stand a chance.
