Richard E Grant's Modern Odyssey review: This charming movie star's jolly around the Med is all about the journey, not the destination
These days, with every hit film, along comes a rash of cash-in shows attempting to grab on to the coat-tails of the box office's latest flavour of the month.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey – telling Homer's tale of Odysseus' 10-year journey home to Ithaca after 10 years spent fighting the Trojan War – is no exception, with first Dan Snow and now Richard E Grant offering their own “personal journeys” into Greek myth.
While both men professed to have read Homer's epic in their teenage years – when most of the rest of us were content with Sven Hassel or Wilbur Smith – their approaches to the subject differed.
Snow – square of jaw and strong of arm – was a little more macho, while this week Richard E Grant's Modern Odyssey (Channel 4, Sun, 8pm) took a rather more esoteric approach.
In both cases, these are effectively celebrity travelogues with some Greek epic guff tacked on, and as with all these shows, the effectiveness of it relies almost totally on the charm of the presenter.
Fortunately, Grant has charm by the bucket-load, as well as wit, fun and an enthusiasm for the things he sees that quickly wins you over.
His first stop on his ‘odyssey’ around the Mediterranean is Malta, and he takes a look inside St John's Cathedral in the capital Valletta.
The baroque interior is startlingly Trumpian in its golden embellishments and opulent paintwork, but Grant is overwhelmed by its exuberance, calling it “baroque on steroids” and claiming “it out-Sistines the Sistine Chapel”.
And then, in a side chapel, we see its hidden treasure – and enormous work by Renaissance bad boy Caravaggio of the beheading of St John the Baptist.
Its intense, dark violence has a transporting effect on Grant: “Just hours into my modern odyssey, and I've been moved to tears.”
If you’ve ever read With Nails, Grant's startlingly indiscreet diaries of his time shooting Hollywood movies like Hudson Hawk, LA Story and Pret a Porter, you'll know he carries his emotions very close to the surface, but it’s refreshing to see someone so clearly enthused by the whole affair, and unironically enjoying himself.
And that’s true whether he's making handmade floor tiles – something of a Maltese tradition, apparently – or having a wander round the oldest free-standing structure in the world, a temple that pre-dates the Pyramids.
By the time he moves on to Malta's small neighbour, Gozo, he is in his element. Reading passages from Homer's poem, looking beamingly around the cave where the beautiful Calypso is said to have held Odysseus, bewitched, for seven years, his wide-eyed wonder carries you along.
“It's a spot where even an immortal might linger a while and gaze in wonder and delight,” he says, and – transported by the white breakers on the pellucid seas, you can't help agreeing.
It almost makes you forget that this is basically another wealthy celebrity having a jolly time in a lovely location at the production company's expense.
But at every ad break you get a coming up and then a recap, as if the producers were afraid that somehow us viewers would struggle to keep our attention on the show.
An assumption that gravely underestimates the power our host's smiling positivity.
There's a slight non-sequitur when Grant suddenly veers off to Turkey to see the site commonly believed to be the actual Troy, but even there he is captivated by the earthquake-resistant walls of the city and the tale of Odysseus' cunning Trojan Horse scheme.
This modern odyssey doesn't break new ground, and you may not learn anything new, but when your travelling companion is Richard E Grant, it's all about the journey, not the destination.