Worst Place to be a Pilot (Channel 4), TV review: This insight at the world’s daredevil fliers makes a smooth take-off

All the featured pilots oozed expat glamour in their aviator shades

On a wing and a prayer: ‘Worst Place to Be a Pilot’ (Channel 4)

Traditional holiday review programmes like Judith Chalmers’ Wish You Were Here...? or Holiday may no longer be on television, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still plenty of opportunities to see the world on the cheap.

The more adventurous sofa-tourist could have spent last night in remote Indonesia, for instance. That’s the Worst Place to Be a Pilot according to the title of Channel 4’s new documentary series. This title is also the kind that could easily get lost in the TV schedules; it doesn’t at all do justice to the dangerous lives of Susi Air’s daredevil employees.

Captain Guy is originally from Surrey, but it seemed a long while since he’d been home. His salt’n’pepper hair and rugged complexion gave him something of the air of Rick Blaine from Casablanca, as he smuggled beers in the luggage hold back to his dry-town base. Captain George on the other hand was like a steely-nerved 21st-century frontiersman as he navigated uncharted skies to land a “metal bird” in a remote tribal area for the very first time. The locals greeted him with dancing, singing and the gift of two live chickens. Apparently they were pleased to see him, which is just as well: local rumour has it that this particular tribe only took missionaries off the menu a few years earlier.

All the featured pilots oozed expat glamour in their aviator shades, but this was no “gap yah” posing opportunity. Machete-armed passengers and wild dogs asleep on the runway were all in a day’s work – and the routes they fly are among the most dangerous in the world, resulting in three fatal crashes in recent years. So why do they do it? Because they love the danger. You can’t have an adventure like this in a hotel penthouse, no matter how high the thread count.

Speaking of which, on Sky Atlantic last night, Richard E Grant’s Hotel Secrets continued its second series. That’s the show in which the star of films such as Spice World stays in the best suites in the most luxurious hotels in the world – and gets paid for it. Last night he was sampling five of the fanciest in Hong Kong. He bounced on the bed in Lady Gaga’s £10,000-a-night suite at The Ritz-Carlton, dipped a toe in The Intercontinental’s rooftop pool (the highest in the world) and ate at Lung King Heen at The Four Seasons, the first Chinese restaurant in the world to earn three Michelin stars.

It’s only natural to resent the man who landed such a cushy job, but it also must be admitted that Grant is particularly well suited to it. Few could seem so completely at home in these plush surroundings, while continuing to relish them as novelties. “There is nothing so fabulous as a bit of luxe on your arse!” he observed in the £6,000-a-night Mandarin Oriental, before enjoying himself so thoroughly in the uber-exclusive Krug Room restaurant that licking the plate clean was the only appropriate way to show appreciation. They didn’t seem to mind.

Grant and his new concierge chums did make occasional reference to the city which exists beyond the lobby – what’s it called again? – but even when discussion turned briefly to the Sars outbreak of 2003, it was still from the enviable comfort of the 103rd-floor bar of the Ritz Carlton. At the beginning of the series Grant asked, “How do these rentable pleasure palaces vary from city to city?” It was a disingenuous question. The answer, as every exhausted business traveller knows, is very little. The monogrammed stationery is nice, though.