Last Night's TV: There's something strangely appealing about curly-headed, big-faced new boy Valentine Warner, the host of What To Eat Now.

What To Eat Now BBC2, 8pm
Amazon BBC2, 9pm

There's something strangely appealing about curly-headed, big-faced new boy Valentine Warner, the host of What To Eat Now. Despite appearing to be the product of some hideous upper-crust genetic mutation experiment involving David Cameron and Bernard Bresslaw, Val's a jolly engaging cove.

Gung ho. Charming. Disarming. Frightfully well spoken; pleasant change from Jamie Oliver's mockney cookery jiggery-pokery. Infectious enthusiasm.

Better still, Val is prone to joyous, small-boy-style arm-waving hyper- activity when confronted with a fork and a plateful of his own yummy seasonal nosh. He's also given to jokey pronouncements like "Big up the truffle!"

Ooh, he does like his native British black truffles, does Val. "The Tiffany toff of my culinary hit-list!" he blithely blithered just before conducting an eager but vain truffle hunt in the English Peak District. As well as truffles (scrummy with scrambled egg), Val's locally-sourced, low-impact menu included Welsh autumn lamb stewed with rosemary and wildflower honey and served with fried potatoes.

Against the odds, this dish fair delighted a Welsh sheep-farmer's 84-year-old mum, who'd never previously used anything more exotic on her lamb than salt and pepper. Blaenau Ffestiniog!

Happily, we didn't see the lambs actually being slaughtered. Less happily, we did see Val despatching rabbits with an air rifle at Vindolanda, the Roman excavation near Hadrian's Wall.

Despite the bunnies making a soopah stew, too (with bacon, thyme, cider, tinned peas, shallots, carrots), there was something off-putting about Val's deadly prowess with a gun. He's still 10 times nicer than Gordon "Killer" Ramsay, but.

Bruce Parry is jolly nice, too. He is the smiliest man on the telly, if not the entire planet. His face is all blissed-out creases, like George W Bush if he had a quantifiable IQ. As he did in Tribe, Bruce advanced his 4000-mile trek along the Amazon by bonding with locals who've scarcely seen a gringo before.

Beginning at the mighty river's melt-water rise in the snowy heights of Nevado Mismi, Peru, Bruce favoured everyone he met with friendly grins, mildly apologetic jolliness, ready self-abasement and an eager air of accomodation. He is the perfect PC-liberal guest, a one-man antidote to 300 years of colonialism in south America. By golly, if genial submissive twinkling becomes an Olympic sport at London 2012, Bruce Parry would bring home the gold medal for Blighty.

Yet Bruce went on to deploy some unexpected, hitherto-unseen weapons from his emotional arsenal. When Bruce's near-comatose director faced death in a Peruvian drug-war no-go zone, due to an abcess on the brain, Bruce was the man offering him concerned reassurance (plus a helicopter flight out).

Empathising with Peru's subsidence coca farmers, Bruce waxed earnest, saddened and pragmatic in defending their lowly but essential role in the global cocaine trade. Their annual profit of $400 is essential, he explained.

Bruce was back to his merry best with the Ashaninka tribe. As Amazon drew to its close, he'd been supping deep draughts of their pink beer, masato, fermented by the tribe's womenfolk by chewing and then regurgitating sweet potato.

Bruce's face was painted with red stripes. He was banging on a bongo drum, wearing an ethnic shift and doing a variant on the hokey-cokey with five giggling women. What a total ambassador. Parry for PM!