I'm a big fan of (double Batfta-winner) Victoria Wood as a writer and stand-up, but have found her slightly annoying on Victoria's Empire - she lost me when she said that visiting parts of the Victorian empire is a less tenuous premise than visiting places called Victoria. So I approached this documentary (on Five, remember, not always the best start) with, as they say, some caution. It hadn't helped that the programme had got a seriously mixed reaction on Simon Mayo's discussion earlier in the day, or that the first joke that Paul Merton cracked centred on a cringingly (it's a word!) obvious pun on Manderin.

But maybe he was just getting it out of the way so he could just get on with the show without it slipping out at some inopportune moment. Because overall this was a hugely successful show, that made sure that the entertainment to information ratio was always kept in balance.

One criticism that I've heard already is that Paul Merton comments when he finds things odd or different, whereas, say, Louis Theroux accepts everything with an admirable stoicism. But we can't all be Louis Theroux, and it would be seriously strange to have Merton presenting a show like this, and then make sure that he is as inobtrusive as possible. This is, without doubt 'Paul Merton in China', not just 'China'. And that's fine by me and, it would seem, by most of the people he meets, too. He can get a laugh even when his audience doesn't understand most of what he has said, and, government officials aside, he can win people over in a moment.

So, what did Merton find in China to comment on? Well first and foremost, there's the impact of the 2008 Olympics on its host city Beijing. While the homes of ordinary people are being torn down, shiny towers of concrete and steel are being thrown up... and left empty because nobody can afford them. Apparently, they're quite literally there for show. Perhaps Merton can get a better idea of the beauty, the history and the importance of this country if he goes to see the Great Wall? Well, he may well have done, but he had noticed a piece in the paper about a famer, Mr. Wu, who 'grows robots', and no pile of bricks were going to get in the way of him seeing that.

So, Merton dragged his interpreter Emma off to see a man tinkering in a shed - and thank goodness he has such good instincts. At first we're shown a tiny, rather underwhelming walking robot, and Merton feels it necessary to go for the human story by chatting to Mrs. Wu about how she's a robot-widow - but then a life size robot wanders into view, pulling Mr. Wu behind it. This is his rickshaw robot, which says that he's taking his 'father' to market, as he does just that. Absolute genius.

This episode, Paul also visited a horrible, soulless psuedo-French chateau where he was dragged into doing karaoke, and treated like a superstar by his fellow (admittedly inebriated) guests, and experienced Chinese cuisine. You could say that he should have expected to eat rather differently there, but you can't really blame someone for being reluctant to eat a donkey's penis: 'Too many cocks spoil the broth', he said in his wonderful, usual dead-pan manner. Well, quite. [annawaits]