So what about New Europe?

I must confess that I was slightly disappointed with the Michael Palin's series that premiered last night, New Europe. I guess that I should have expected this, given that I was a bit of a specialist on this, having studied the region at university and having lived in one part of it.
I haven't lived in the ex-Yugoslavia or Albania, but it was skimpy. If it had to be detailed on any of these countries, it would probably have ended up on BBC4. Slovenia is a small country, but it was covered in 20 seconds, with not a smidgen about a country's background which has a longer history of civilisation than Britain. Palin tended to stick to the Croatian coast with Zagreb not even getting a look in, despite being a staging post on the orginal Orient Express.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was covered by only Mostar and Sarajevo, but no talk of Torville and Dean's skating gold medals. Not even mentioning the 1984 Winter Olympics is a bit odd. Again with Serbia. There is so much to the country than just Belgrade e.g. Kosovo and when two Serbian women joked about how Serbs celebrated a catastrophic defeat, Palin knew they were talking about the battle of Kosovo, I knew they were talking about the battle on "the field of blackbirds," but how many casual others?
Montenegro was bypassed altogether. So was the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, unless that gets 20 seconds in the next episode. It was onto Albania with Palin messing about on top of pillboxes in the main Albanian port, Durres. This small corner of Europe got ten minutes and Palin did fill in a bit of backstory, but it once was one of the most advanced regions in the ancient Mediterranean. Implying that the capital, Tirana, is a turd is a bit harsh. Maybe for a tourist it is not that impressive, but I'm sure to stay there more than a few days one can get a feel for the undercurrents of the local culture. Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia can seem a bit grey to the transitory person, but one really needs to live there. Palin rounded it off with a trip to the home village of Albania's greatest national hero, Skanderbeg, where Sufism, mystical Islam, is practiced. No explanation as to how it might have migrated from the Indian subcontinent to here, but I could theorize how it could of.
The main trouble with the series is that it does not have much of a point, except paying Palin to be a tourist. With his first two travelogues, Around the World in Eighty Days and Pole to Pole, he wasn't just wandering about but there was a sense of mission. With later series such as Himalaya or Sahara, that overriding impetus was gone and so it is with New Europe. Only the scenery truly commands the attention, but it lacks drive and detail. I'll still watch it for the glorious landscapes, both countryside and city.