Brazil with Michael Palin

Second only to Neil Armstrong, Michael Palin has been seen going to more places by more people than anyone else. So it's no great surprise that Palin has become rather good at making travelogues. There's only one blank page in the former Monty Python star's well-worn passport: the page where a Brazilian visa would go.

Brazil's an interesting subject: the next host of the Olympics, the next host of the World Cup, and a country with a rich and gaudily televisual culture. It's also a nation of jarring, disconcerting contrasts where some of the most glamorous districts are separated from dismal shanty towns by just a thin wall.

You can tell from the introduction that Palin isn't too interested in the problems. Brazil With Michael Palin (Wednesday, 9pm on BBC One) is an old fashioned Whickeresque postcard of a programme. When Palin, normally the most surefooted of guides, speaks of Brazil's exploitation of African slaves, one might reasonably expect a measure of thoughtfulness about the misery that underpinned the grandeur. After all, some 40 per cent of the 11 million slaves transported to the Americas ended up in Brazil. Palin gives the impression that the end of slavery was almost a bit of an inconvenience.

By the time he got to the beach for an agreeable chat with a leering voyeur, I had stopped being disappointed. Perhaps there will be more of a look below the surface gloss in the later episodes (this is the first of four) but it's an inauspicious start for such a widely admired broadcaster.

I expected magisterial TV from Michael Palin, I rather feared that Girls Behind Bars: Stacey Dooley In The USA (Monday, 9pm on BBC Three) might be more mediocre. I was wrong on both counts. We've seen incredulous TV journalists investigating US prisons before. Louis Theroux is barely out of the places. But self-effacing everywoman Stacey Dooley is the perfect guide for this descent into a strange, brutal world. Always more interested in showing us what's happening rather than dwelling on her own reaction to it, she visits a gruelling 'boot camp' for women – most of them quite young girls – looking for a fast track out of the USA's notorious penal system.

There's no doubt that the 'Shock' regime, as it's known, is a deterrent. Participants must have their hair cropped on day one, to make it easier to have a shower when there is a time limit of three minutes. There is practically nonstop exercise, even a mile-long run before breakfast.

When, later in the programme, Stacey visits a regular prison, it seems almost a treat by comparison. All of the inmates are self-confessed criminals, and deserved to be dealt with in some way or other. But when you hear about their childhoods, or see the tears blossom on a tough girl's cheeks when her fellow inmates stage an intervention about her behaviour, it would take a harder heart than mine not to feel at least a twinge of pity.