Stephen Fry jumps on the bus to Mexico

CUE the On The Buses music, because our love affair with presenter Stephen Fry continues as he boards a decommissioned yellow US school bus to take on hot air balloons, zip wires, pinata-smashing and swimming with manatees as part of a four-part documentary on Central America.

It's seven years since he embarked on an epic journey to each of the USA's 50 states for the BBC. Hopefully, we won't see Fry in so much of a hurry, but he certainly doesn't linger in the first episode, which gallops through Mexico.

"I'd only ever visited Mexico before, and that wasn't really for very long," he explains. "That's part of the reason I wanted to do this series. I had the idea about four years ago when I was chatting about the American series I'd done, going round all the States in a taxi, and of course the most enjoyable part is going to places you've never seen before. And I said the places that have always intrigued me are the areas between North and South America.

"I knew that some of these countries were potentially dangerous, that they were the only land-route between the cocaine-producing areas of South America and the huge markets in the States. Everybody knew that there were cartels ruling some areas of some cities."

Fry starts on the Sante Bridge, which separates El Paso in Texas from Ciudad Juarez, an important transit point for drug cartels – and a place regarded as one of Mexico's most dangerous cities.

However, he is quick to point out that he loved the experiences he had, particularly when it came to meeting the region's people.

"The one thing you can't get from books and the internet is a sense of the people, and in the end that's always going to be what's fun and interesting and different to all the other characters you meet./ And the culture. I always say there are some things that tell you more about a country than anything else, and they are the music, the food and the humour. And Central America is pretty rich in all of those things, it really is."

Later in the first episode, Fry takes a trip to Chihuahua, and en route he meets some of the area's cowboys, then travels by train to the Sierra Madre mountains, where he's dazzled by its natural wonders... and game for an 80mph ride on a zip wire in the heart of Mexico's Tarahumara mountains.

"Overall it was a terrific experience, it really was amazing. It was full of colour and variety and astonishment. I hope if this series does one thing, it might make people think, 'Let's go to Guatemala for our holidays,' Or 'Let's go to Costa Rica for our holidays' - instead of to the obvious places."

Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1, 9pm)

ACTOR and stage director Derek Jacobi enjoyed a relatively humble upbringing in Leytonstone, London, where his father ran a sweet shop and his mother worked in a drapery, but research into his maternal side of the family soon uncovers a link to a far more intriguing past. Discovering that his great-grandmother's name was Salome Laplain, Jacobi finds that he is descended from a wealthy French Huguenot, Joseph de la Plaigne, who fled religious persecution, and had connections to royalty (a certain William III) on this side of the channel.

Very British Problems (C4, 10pm)

JAMES Corden, Jonathan Ross, Ruth Jones and Stephen Mangan are among those ruminating on the stereotypical Brit's excruciating inability to express raw emotions and feelings. Topics under the comedy microscope include the inner rage that can consume people, and which they keep to themselves, being unable to accept even the most innocent of compliments and a bizarre reluctance to complain in shops and restaurants, even when it is painfully obvious that the service falls far short of expectations.