In my preview about Ray Mears and Ewan McGregor: Extreme Jungle (BBC Two, Wednesday, 8pm) I noted that the show "could be the dullest thing ever shown on TV... but it could also be thrilling and engrossing. We'll just have to see...". So with that, I found myself settling down with a fair bit of worry that I was going to be let down by two very amiable chaps who normally do a sterling job of avoiding my ire.

Of course, Ray Mears is an expert in survival, and thus, is given the task of baby-sitting Ewan McGregor who Ray fondly refers to as a "film star" (which is a phrase I haven't heard in years!). Deep deep deep in the Honduran Jungle searching for a lost civilisation, the pair face a gruelling task with Ewan presumably there to inject some life into the dry Mears. Did they succeed?

I'm a brat when it comes to TV shows. I expect the best all the time. Failing the best, I want mind melting ideas. I'll let a programme off if it's trying something unique and new. So to sit down with a pair of blokes hacking their way through a bloody great forest both boded well and worried me. The main draw for this show was that, no matter how dull the content was, at least the scenery would be stunning. We'd get some shots of monkeys and giant insects, and that's no bad thing to fall back on.

What I didn't count on was the fact that, such was the difficulty of the slog, the scenery was nowhere to be seen. Of course, I'm not trying to tell you that they were walking through some weird void like The Sea of Holes in Yellow Submarine, but rather, like our explorers, constantly staring at their feet whilst marching on through the pain barrier, the scenery was not open and vast and awe-inspiring, but rather, loud and claustrophobic. Now, that's no gripe. It was very interesting to see how the jungle looks from the inside trying to look out. At one point, which saw a rare clearing in the trees, saw a clearly stunned McGregor gasping at the view. The jungle, like much of nature, is simultaneously beautiful and cruel.

Aside from the tips on how to stay alive from Mears (which he makes seem so bloody easy when they're obviously not) what was interesting was the pace of the show. Initially, the whole thing was quite action packed. We saw our team hurtling down a river in a dinghy backed by dramatic strings. Morale was still high at this point, so every tricky segment of river was met by whoops and cheers from the team. Foolishly, I thought 'I'd like a go at that!' when the stark reality is that I'm one of the poorest swimmers in the world and as weak as a kitten. I could drown simply by looking at a photograph of water.

After the swashbuckling action, the jungle began to wear McGregor down... and this is where things got really interesting. The constant hum of the jungle, along with incessant rainfall left Ewan psychologically marked. As Mears pointed out, "It's important to not let the rain get into your head". The constant battle against the elements left the team tired and downbeat with occasional moments of awe and achievement. It was really interesting to see the battle of wits that ensued. McGregor, by no means a soft lad, found himself trudging on and "feeling like [he] was going to die". It was wrong for me to hope for pure entertainment through this show as the lads were in one of the most hostile environments on the planet. The terrain was so exhausting that I began to will them on as oppose to grumbling about the lack of showmanship.

This was a fascinating programme, part endurance test, part dazzling foray into secret caves with archaeological finds that were truly stunning. McGregor, as expected, provided the candid asides to camera with a surprising chipperness in the face of adversity. Every single time he faced something horrendous, he found himself laughing. Was it something to do with sleep deprivation? Probably. No matter though. This was a show that kept me interested for it's duration and you can't really ask for more than that.