The actor is as eccentrically enthusiastic as ever. But do we really want her to visit former colonies riven by genocide to look at the tasty ingredients they produce?

While we all wish the sun never to set on Joanna Lumley, there is a mounting sense that the sort of travelogue in which she specialises has had its day. This sense mounts further over the course of the opening episode of Joanna Lumley’s Spice Trail Adventure, ITV’s latest deployment of its gamest gel.

Our heroine jams on her metaphorical school hat, hitches up her metaphorical stockings and sets off from the port of Ambon, Indonesia, for the Banda Islands – for centuries the source of all nutmeg and mace for an insanely lucrative European trade. The lushly forested slopes of Banda Neira rise breathtakingly out of the water as Lumley crosses an azure sea in a tiny boat. “I don’t know why people go to the moon,” she says, gazing at the vision before her. “It’s sensationally boring, I can tell you that.” This had me Googling “Has Joanna Lumley been to the moon?” (it seemed the sort of thing Richard Branson could have talked her into). She hasn’t, making this exactly the kind of eccentric schoolmarm moment she is there to provide.

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