TV Review: Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways and Rick Stein's India

It was also a very good night for affable, blokeish presenters who seem to have been regular fixtures on the box ever since God was in short trousers.

First there was affable, blokeish Chris Tarrant, making the 22-hour journey down the country's west coast from Mumbai – or Bombay – to Mangalore aboard the Konkan railway.

An hour later and up popped affable, blokeish Rick Stein, who was in Mumbai on a quest to find the perfect curry.

If you're like me – too cheap to pay for satellite telly – and you have Freeview, you could have watched Tarrant on Channel Five +1 and then switched straight over to Rick Stein, and it would have been like watching one, two-hour programme.

Well, I say the same programme, but Stein was looking at curries and showing how to cook them; at no point did Chris Tarrant attempt to tunnel through a mountain or build a locomotive, but that quibble aside these were interesting, well-made documentaries that attempted to explain something about the country.

And both had sumptuous photography that you could have framed and mounted.

"I just love India," said Tarrant in an affably blokeish way as he took a taxi to Mumbai railway station to begin his 472-mile journey. "I just love it. It's a madhouse."

Apparently the British built over 40,000 miles of track between 1858 and 1947, but they never touched the west coast because of monsoons and enormously tricky terrain.

It wasn't until the 1990s that work finally began on the railway, and its 92 tunnels and 2,000 bridges were completed within seven years – a truly fantastic achievement considering we cannot even manage a direct service between London and Shropshire.

Tarrant was enormously impressed with what he found as he journeyed along the line – the fact passengers can open the train doors while the train is moving, the people sleeping in cupboards, and the chefs surrounded by pans of boiling oil as they work all hours in the shaky dining car to prepare food for 1,700 passengers.

Only once did he lose his affability, and that was when he was waiting for his connecting train and couldn't work out why people were running over the tracks in front of him.

Ten people are killed every day on the railway tracks in Mumbai alone, we were told.

He realised it was because there was no alternative way to cross, but where other hosts might have taken their reaction out in the editing room – "You stupid woman," he gasped in horror as another person dashed over the line, "hold your children!" – Tarrant kept his in, and you liked him even more for being so human.

Rick Stein is equally human in his approach to making travel telly – i.e. looking really chuffed just to be doing it – but his cooking is somewhat better.

Anyone who tries making curries at home knows it isn't easy – well, it isn't for me – but Stein makes complex dishes look as simple as loading the toaster. How does he do it?

Mind you, the Indian cooks were no different – tiny kitchen, basic equipment, yet somehow they knock up something wonderful. You never get results like that with a jar of paste and a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Presumably the Indian Tourist Board has drafted in some extra staff for the next week or so. I imagine they'll be fairly busy.

Andrew Owen