James May's 20th Centrury (BBC2, 8pm), Cape Wrath (C4, 10pm)

Presenter James May has driven his fair share of vehicles in Top Gear but his new series finds him behind the wheel of a car that's difficult to handle. You might expect a 1908 Ford Model T, the first mass-produced car, to be fairly simple. But no, May confesses to finding all the knobs and handles he needs to master a bit confusing.

Particularly important is ensuring the car is in neutral and the handbrake is engaged when cranking the engine "because when you start the car it immediately goes forward and runs over you". He says that this used to happen quite a lot in the early days of motoring.

He encounters another problem as the car comes to a halt at the bottom of a hill. If the car's short of petrol, the remaining fuel sloshes to the back of the tank and causes the vehicle to stop.

The solution is not to get out and push, but to turn the car round and reverse up the hill with the remaining petrol pushed to the front of the tank.

Like Andrew Marr in his recent history of modern Britain, May's series is going over old ground but, again as with Marr, the presenter is such a personable and knowledgeable chap that it all comes across as spanking new.

His aim is to explore and explain the innovations that defined the 20th century, beginning with the technology that made the world a smaller place.

The start of long haul travel across the Atlantic was a major factor. Alcock and Brown set off on a non-stop crossing of the ocean armed with a couple of ham sandwiches and a flask of Oxo broth. They were attempting to win the prize money - equivalent to £1.5m today - put up by the Daily Mail for the first successful crossing.

These aviators were more successful than the airship industry. Britain's dirigibles always lagged behind Germany's zeppelins, but as May points out, they were an accident waiting to happen. He shoots a fiery bolt at a hydrogen-filled balloon to illustrate the dangers, reinforcing this with newsreel footage of the crash of the Hindenberg.

Surprisingly, despite the inflammable situation, smoking was permitted on airships - in a room lined with asbestos. Only one lighter was allowed on board and that was attached to a chain in the smoking room.

May's more at home on the road than in the air. Today, we take motorways for granted. He recalls how there was no speed limit when the M1 opened in 1959. That was curbed after a Le Mans racing car was tested at speeds of 180mph.

The second instalment takes him into space. He doesn't set foot on the moon but does drive the most expensive car ever made, a lunar rover vehicle or moon buggy. He reckons the bill for that was $38m. May gets to play with rockets and infiltrate Nasa's headquarters, which is guarded by alligators (it's information like that which make his series so enjoyable).

Nowhere he goes is as strange as Meadowlands, the community at the centre of the drama Cape Wrath. "New house, new life, new us," says David Morrissey's Danny Brogan as, with his wife and kids, he takes up residence.

The series is like Twin Peaks crossed with Desperate Housewives. Once the game is given away - everyone is in the witness protection programme - you wonder where it can go in the next six episodes. Into dark and disturbing places would appear to be the answer. Rarely has such a collection of odd, unappealing people been gathered in one place.

Handyman Jack (or Jack Of All Trades as he introduces himself) is a creepy guy who finds a perfect partner in Danny's over-sexed daughter Zoe. "I'm hopeless at DIY. I think I need to be serviced by a professional," she says - and the last thing on her mind is putting up shelves.

Son Mark hasn't spoken for four months, a situation resolved after he spies on their neighbour getting undressed and feels compelled not only to talk, but dress up like his twin sister Zoe. Strange.

You know it's all going to end in tears.