What's On TV: Bear Grylls back with Britain's Biggest Adventures; Tru Calling returns

Even if we exclude politics, religion and sporting teams, there are still many things on this big ol' crazy planet that polarise opinion. Things that are bright and wonderful to some, rile and offend others. Mooncakes, Canto-pop and Jeremy Clarkson, for example, leave little room for ambivalence, and rightly so - they are all awful.

Most of our problems are, of course, first-world issues, such as slow-streaming Wi-fi or running out of couscous. But having the freedom to express ourselves without fear of persecution, helps define who we are. You may decide to believe everything Fox News tells you, and to scoff durian for breakfast. In both of these instances you would be a buffoon, but, hey, our differences make the world a more exciting place.

When I informed friends that I was previewing another show featuring Bear Grylls (Britain's Biggest Adventures; BBC Earth, Tuesday at 10.45pm), the survival expert drew equally tenacious black and white responses. Following allegations that the British adventurer (above) had stayed at hotels instead of sleeping in the wild, as he claimed, while shooting Born Survivor, and the controversy surrounding the killing of an endangered crocodile by contestants on his reality-television show The Island (which he may or may not have had any control over), many former fans had lost faith in Grylls.

On his most recent outings (which were reviewed in this column, mainly because the chief scout is on the TV more often than the gobby Gordon Ramsay), however, he has shown his more humble side. Whether it was a self-conscious decision to tone down the bravado or simply a well-timed marketing strategy, who knows, but it has certainly made his shows more enjoyable.

Britain's Biggest Adventures, a three-part series that journeys through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the British Isles, continues along a similar path. Before exploring the Scottish Highlands and England's Yorkshire Dales, Grylls hits rugged north Wales, with a trek around Snowdonia. With boundless enthusiasm, he free-dives for mantis shrimp, scales treacherous mountains and soars through the sky in a paraglider. Basically, this is Grylls having a stab at making a wildlife and travel documentary, and the effect is a little like David Attenborough mainlining Red Bull.

Departing from his typical know-it-all approach, the celebrity survivalist invites geologists and scientists to educate him about the natural wonders he encounters, and the result may actually change your opinion of the don't-try-this-at-home action man.

During its heyday in the early noughties, fantasy action dramedy Buffy the Vampire Slayer garnered both critical and popular acclaim. But, let's face it, much of the show's teenage fanbase arose from the charms of its female stars - Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan and Eliza Dushku.

When Buffy ended, in 2003, its lead, Michelle Gellar, surprisingly, never went on to greater things, appearing in only a handful of horror movies, some TV roles and as Daphne in two Scooby Doo films. Hannigan fared slightly better, snagging a role in long-running comedy series How I Met Your Mother and appearing briefly alongside Dushku in the short-lived Buffy spin-off, Angel.

Dushku, meanwhile, went on to star in supernatural drama Tru Calling, in the role of Tru Davies, a medical student forced to take a job in a morgue, where she discovers she can communicate with the dead and "re-live" the deceased's final day. Each week a dead person would talk to her, and she would try to undo the inevitable and save another soul.

Tru Calling began as a rather predictable and mediocre sci-fi crime series but by the end of the first season it had begun to iron out its flaws, mainly thanks to the addition of 1990s heartthrob Jason Priestley midway through the run.

An improved second season begins on Tuesday at 10pm on Fox Crime. Picking up a few months after last year's finale, Jack (Priestley) reappears to resume his mission to prevent Tru from subverting fate, but what are his real motives? Who is the good guy and who is using their power for evil? It's not quite as clear as we were first led to believe and, unfortunately, we may never find out, because Tru Calling has been axed and these will be the final six episodes to air.