Channel hop

"Thank God for Darwin, eh?" Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey is a man of many talents: comedian, actor, musician, ornithologist and saviour of owls from Chinese restaurants. His surrealist "non-joke" humour is infused with a ridiculous cleverness, equal parts philosophical and observational; it's comedy that both uniquely entertains and educates without ever being preachy. Couple this intellect with the hippie materialist's insatiable enthusiasm for history and globetrotting and you have the perfect adventurer to follow in the footsteps of one of the forgotten greats of natural history, Victorian explorer Alfred Russel Wallace.

In Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero (right; BBC Knowledge, Thursday at 9.55pm), our comedic guide takes us on a two-part exotic voyage of discovery into the ancient rainforests of Borneo, to garner some much-deserved recognition for Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin and the mostly forgotten co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection. Journeying to some of the 25,000 islands of the Malay archipelago, Bailey stops over in the bustling chaos of Jakarta before setting up camp in the jungle and exploring the mind-boggling wonders of its wildlife with a passion to rival that of his maverick hero. It's an informative documentary, made all the more enjoyable by Bailey's apparently genuine admiration for Wallace and his natural comic lilt, particularly evident in his failed attempts in the art of butterfly capture and his spot-on reaction to eating durian for the first time ("like someone put a quiche in a car and left it for four days"). Wallace would have no doubt been proud to have such a knowledgeable and curious fellow as Bailey championing his cause.

Also adventuring into unknown territory this week are fictional pals Bill Haskell and Byron Epstein, as their search for gold in the Yukon wilderness continues in Klondike (Discovery Channel, tomorrow at 10pm). This six-part epic, set in the 1890s and adapted from Charlotte Gray's Gold Diggers, is Discovery Channel's first scripted drama. It premiered last week, as college graduate Haskell (Richard Madden, the recently massacred Robb Stark of Game of Thrones) and the street-hustling Epstein (the splendidly named Augustus Prew; Kick-Ass 2) began their arduous trek from New York across the perilous snow-covered mountaintops of northwest Canada in search of their glistering fortune. Having survived raging rapids and packs of salivating wolves, the boys settle in the lawless prospecting town of Dawson City, where the shadier frontier folk make them as welcome as a hedgehog in a balloon factory.

With Hollywood director Ridley Scott in the executive producer's chair, a 24-carat cast (Abbie Cornish, Sam Shepard, Tim Roth, Ian Hart), majestic cinematic settings and a whole host of greedy rogues and reprobates, Klondike has the elements to make it a family friendly Deadwood. Sadly, the storyline becomes a little too moralising and the lack of grit ultimately leaves this western-by-numbers failing to strike gold.