The immediate question that presents itself with a programme called Michael Palin in North Korea is – do we really need Michael Palin in North Korea? It already has an actual Ministry of Silly Walks – and you can get quite severely punished if you don’t fall into step. It was a question that hung over the whole of the opening episode, filmed with permission and under the close supervision of the despotic regime of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic. Palin and the crew were attended at all times by two personable guides (one of whom explained that her party badge symbolised all that the North Koreans “learn from our hearts that our leaders have done great things for our country – we call it singlehearted unity”) and shadowed by a less personable entourage a few degrees further out, who weren’t featured on camera.

The whole thing was an exercise in so-far-and-no-further. “Can there be a country more shrouded in mystery and fear?” asked Palin in voiceover at the beginning of the episode. To which the answer can only be – no, but not on the evidence of the rest of the hour.

The physical difference between China and North Korea as Palin crossed the Yalu river was obvious. Seventy years of isolation have left the latter bleak and barren, while its neighbour’s gleaming buildings scrape the sky and stand as shining monuments to social and economic progress. North Korea has low-rise concrete blocks and no cars and the only shining monuments are the two huge statues of the country’s first two supreme leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il, at Mansu Hill. They smile benevolently over Pyongyang.

Palin, though unsettled by the lack of internet, absence of phone signal and the fact that the border officials have possession of all his and his companions’ passports, marvelled at the extravagant underground train stations and the extraordinarily robotic, choreographed movements of the traffic police – all young women “rumoured to be handpicked by Kim Jong-un himself” – got a head massage at a state-run health complex (synchronised swimming in the pool, a very narrow range of approved haircuts available in the salon) and was shown the centre where table tennis players practise, bent on fulfilling the third supreme leader’s current wish that his country becomes the standard bearer for the sport.

Palin also visited a secondary school. He threw an inflatable globe around and the children dutifully named countries, while their teacher stood in the background looking increasingly worried. He asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Doctors, teachers and loyal members of the army “respectful of Kim Jong-un”. One girl wanted to be a writer. She stood up and recited a self-penned poem glorifying Mount Paektu, the birthplace – North Koreans are taught – of Kim Jong-il.

Palin professed himself eager to engage with the “real” country and its people, but of course – if by real, we mean the kernels of souls and psyches presumed to have survived intact the generations of propaganda, brainwashing, constant threat of punishment and corrosive fear – this is impossible. The closest he came was to note, slightly patronisingly – rare is the travelogue that sidesteps that trap entirely – that the “joy and humanity” during the International Workers’ Day, when the parks are flooded with three million people drinking, dancing and drinking some more, “is undimmed”. And yet still, when a drunken man danced with him slightly too long, his wife quickly pulled him away.

The overall tone of the hour remained, because Palin the presenter has become no less amiable or avuncular with age, soothingly gentle. The strangeness of North Korea came through, but not the sinisterness. Except perhaps when Palin stood on his balcony and listened to the haunting Blade Runner-like music that emanates from unspecifiable sources and permeates the city every morning, calling its citizens to work. The greatest piece of knowledge vouchsafed us by this opening episode was definitely that if you want to infuse your regime with a sense of inescapable yet ineffable threat, use a theremin.

There were a few nods to the fact that he is there at “a unique time in the country’s history”, as Trump’s gravitational field pulls on everything and the papers fill with news of unprecedented meetings between the heads of North and South Korea, but it stayed a travelogue rather than an investigation into anything more. There were hints that it would dig slightly deeper in the trailer for next week’s episode, when Palin heads out into the less prosperous countryside and visits military bases, but you almost fear the damage his amiability could do. In North Korea, you don’t want to see someone opening up while, just off camera, the state’s spies watch.