Paris BBC2, 9pm

Those of you who were loitering in this vicinity this time last week (and don't think it hasn't been noted. We know there's at least one leader you haven't read yet) may recall the regular inhabitant of this rectangle making what was, I think it is safe to say, a declaration of love for Sandrine Voillet, the presenter of the BBC2 series Paris .

I hope you won't mind returning with me to the city of light again this week, not just because of the obvious charms of Madame Voillet (and I can give you her number, David, if you're interested - though I think she is already spoken for), but because it seems like we've chanced upon a new TV subgenre here - the upmarket travel show. Call it the Conde Nast Traveller tendency, a glossy take on glossy places that allows us to go a bit beyond a five-minute report by Rowland Rivron on the latest series of Holiday.

It all started with Francesco Da Mosta, an architect, TV presenter, film-maker and a count no less, showing us around his home city of Venice and then the rest of Italy. Now it's Sandrine's turn. Next up I'm betting it will be Barcelona or maybe Prague, or even Berlin. Presumably even now there's a BBC producer seeking out Eurohunks and Eurohotties down the Stare Mestro and around Mitte.

Blood and Chocolate, the second in Voillet's entertaining flaneries around her adopted city (she's from Nantes originally), took us from the middle ages (and included the story of Abelard and Heloise that would have had male readers crossing their legs in sympathy with the philosopher and lover. There was also an account of the life of Henri IV, who was, Voillet tells us, "my favourite king" - not something you'd expect to hear from, say, Simon Schama), through to the French Revolution and beyond.

Along the way we get to see Ms Voillet sample some chocolate (which in the eighteenth century was prescribed by Parisian doctors for broken hearts - they probably still do), sail up the Seine, tell us the Pont Neuf is the city's romantic bridge and suggest that the revolution was the result of libertine pornography and coffee-drinking.

Actually, there is some truth to that. As Andrew Hussey pointed out last year in his rather wonderful book, Paris: The Secret History (Penguin, £9.99 and worth every penny): "The link between pornography and politics is one of the oldest Parisian traditions still alive in the modern city." To prove this he interviews film director and porn actress Ovidie who, interestingly enough, also turns up to speak to Voillet in Blood and Chocolate, too.

I point this out not to make any suggestions of plagiarism, but rather to outline the limitations of this new televisual subgenre. To Voillet, Ovidie gives us a soundbite about the Marquise De Sade. In Hussey's book she outlines the philosophy behind the libertines, of whom De Sade was the most excessive. Of course, Hussey has the room to do so, but more than that, he's writing a history. Voillet is presenting a travelogue - and a glossy one to boot.

It's not that she dodges the darker side of the Parisian story. In one of the last scenes in Voillet's film we find her in the catacombs beneath the city, where the skulls and bones of the victims of The Terror - including its instigators Robespierre, Marat and Danton - are piled high. It's a powerful visual signifier of what happened in this city at the end of the eighteenth century. But what actually happened between the fall of the Bastille and the rise of Napoleon is not really covered.

So what, you might say. Paris has no pretensions to be serious history. This is learning lite, and it's enjoyable enough as that. But then my problem with the programme is not really the programme itself. It's with a little detail in the final credits. Paris is, it seems, an Open University production. Which is both a little surprising and a little depressing. It couldn't be further removed from the cliches that attach themselves to that name - the cheap production values, the beardy, uncharismatic presenters - but then it also couldn't be further removed from its educational values, too. And even the love-struck might see that that's not something to be applauding.