Last Night's TV: Question: which canine does much-loved comedy actor Martin Clunes most resemble, face-wise? His fizzog's fleshy folds and rubbery rumples surely give him the lugubrious and sleepy coupon of a bloodhound. Or is it a shar-pei?

Martin Clunes: A Man and his Dogs
STV, 9pm

Question: which canine does much-loved comedy actor Martin Clunes most resemble, face-wise? His fizzog's fleshy folds and rubbery rumples surely give him the lugubrious and sleepy coupon of a bloodhound. Or is it a shar-pei?

Or possibly a St Bernard?

In real life, Clunes owns three cold-nosed tail-waggers - two golden cocker spaniels, one black labrador - and doesn't look like any of them, thereby undermining the old folk wisdom which insists that dog owners grow to become the doubles of their four-legged friends (or vice versa).

But a more important query dogged me last night: would ITV's overseers have allowed Clunes to indulge his love of mutts in the two-part Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs if he weren't playing Dr Martin Ellingham in Doc Martin - that is, if he weren't the beleaguered channel's most bankable primetime star in its most dependable hit show?

Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs is a vanity project, designed to please a big name (and his production company, Buffalo Pictures Ltd), not least by taking him on a jolly hol to red-hot Alice Springs by way of snowy Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Luckily for us viewers, however, it's a show into which Clunes has sunk vast amounts of genuine enthusiasm, hard work and his not inconsiderable TV nous - which means that, against the odds, A Man and His Dogs is jolly watchable stuff.

It's informative, too, uncovering a heap of fresh doggy facts. Did you know, for example, that every day of every year the world's pooch population increases by 1.2million puppies, the canine birth rate being six times greater than the human one?

And did you know that the biddable, non-threatening domestic mutt currently dozing by your fireside shares 99% of its genes with its fearsome ancestor, the wolf?

Scary big things, wolves. Almost as scary as the bloke Clunes met who communes with a six-pack of nature's slavering hell-hounds on a fenced reserve in Devon. Shaun Ellis is his name: a beefy cove with stringy hair who may well be the result of a genetic in-breeding experiment involving Dado Prso and Mark Hateley - yup, that scary.

Ellis howls like a wolf, emits soothing wolf gargles and gets down on his hands and knees to head-butt snarling wolves (it stops them biting each other, apparently). Though he draws the line at joining the wolves in ripping dead deer apart with their teeth, Ellis acts as his wolf pack's mediator. By contrast, Clunes merely had his head and face playfully nuzzled by a wolf, looking properly terrified as the beast's huge killing-machine jaws came into close proximity with his own.

A Man and His Dogs is also well served by Clunes's admirable skills as an interviewer. Whether bonding with alarming wolf-men or observing pawky rural rat-catchers with their Jack Russells, Clunes keeps asking pertinent questions, even as he clicks away relentlessly with a stills camera.

It makes for easeful yet compelling Sunday-evening viewing. Well done Clunes and his genial, informative chat.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have my own vanity project to punt to TV supremos. I have high hopes for David Belcher: A Man and His Love of Collecting Vintage Levis, Lolling in a Hammock Next to a Hillside Tuscan Villa's Pool And Drinking Proper Czech Lager While Reading American Crime Novels (No Tartan Noir Tripe).