The first episode of Harry's Arctic Heroes (BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm), which follows Prince Harry and a team of soldiers who had been wounded in action on a trek to the North Pole, spent a lot of time focusing on the prince's preparations for the trip.

We watched as he organised his little packets of dried food and folded his little royal socks into piles. We also watched as he made the difficult decision of what to wear in a minus-34 degree climate. His original choice – an SS uniform – was apparently rejected …

What quickly emerged throughout this opening section of the episode was an impression of a young man who, while not exactly ordinary, has clearly had some ordinariness rub off on him. He was self-deprecating, mildly amusing, and clearly willing to pretend that the letters HRH are not always lurking in front of his name (even though no-one else was).

However, what you couldn’t escape, what was always buzzing in the background like a fuse about to pop, was the fact that this was royalty on television – more specificially, royalty speaking on television – and the history of that is not good. I’m thinking of that awful clip of a petulant Prince Edward on It’s A Royal Knockout. And that Panorama programme with Diana: the one with her wounded eyes and the knife in her hand. All in all, television has been a bit of disaster for royalty, unless they stick to waving or, in the case of the Queen Mother, only ever saying one word in public in 85 years: “hello”. She had the right idea.

Except that, even though the prince did do some speaking, Harry’s Arctic Heroes was actually a little coy with its royal star and focused instead on the soldiers wounded in Afghanistan. The most remarkable of them in many ways was Jaco Van Gass, a 26-year-old who lost an arm in action. Jaco is clearly a sensitive guy but he’s also a soldier, which means the emotions are a little opaque – it feels like you have to look at them through frosted glass. Then again, his understanding of the consquences of what happened to him, explained to the camera in the middle of an angry arctic storm, was sharp and clear.

“There is a circle of people who are affected by your injuries,” he said. “Friends. Family. But they supported me. They helped me. And I’m taking them to the Pole with me.” Then the camera panned back and we watched Jaco as he struggled to get his kit together, and all the time he was determined not to ask for help. In fact, all he wanted to do was offer help to others, which he did when his colleague Steve started to struggle with his failing back (Steve broke his spine in Afghanistan).

It was a glimpse of the kind of inter-connectedness, the unsentimental reliability, these military men possess and live by, and it was this that Harry seemed to be drawn to, demonstrating perhaps that he is clearly more of a soldier than he is a prince.

In the episodes to come, as the prince and the soldiers strike deeper into a landscape that makes this Earth look like an alien planet, it is this that is likely to keep us on his side – and avoid the royal TV disaster.