AS some fairly disastrous documentaries have shown in the past, taking comedians away from their natural habitat and trying to make them TV presenters is not necessarily a good idea.

Without a microphone in hand and a live audience to react to, some do seem to struggle.

They either try too hard to be funny or it’s almost as though they are out to prove that the ‘real me’ is not the character you normally see on screen.

So it was a pleasant surprise to follow the trials and tribulations of Ed Byrne and Andy Parsons as they tackled a trip across Siberia in a new series of World’s Most Dangerous Roads.

The concept sounds like something dreamed up during a blue sky strategy day: Let’s get TV personalities to drive on some off the most inhospitable highways in the world and watch them suffer.”

But somehow it works.

Sure it’s no Ice Road Truckers but it offers a decent hour’s viewing.

Byrne and Parsons struck the right balance of trying to play up to the cameras and knuckling down to producing an entertaining travelogue through a fascinating part of the world.

Battling through snow and ice and visiting the coldest inhabited place on earth, you feared for their extremities as they kept having to dig their 4x4 out of drifts.