Dara and Ed’s Road to Mandalay: comedians getting along – where’s the fun in that?

Is it fun to go on holiday with a comedian? TV producers seem to think so. With Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden sharing meals, trading celebrity impressions and edging closer to killing each other on The Trip to Spain, while Richard Ayoade takes reluctant city breaks with various celebrities in Travel Man, comics make for popular travel guides, dispensing information as part of a set up, landing their experiences along with a joke.

During Dara and Ed's Road to Mandalay (RTÉ One, Thursday, 10.15pm), a three-part travel show that conveys Dara O'Briain and Ed Byrne through South East Asia, the comedians briefly bolster their own credentials. "There's a reason they get comedians to do these kinds of journeys, because we're actually quite curious anyway," says O'Briain. "You don't become a comedian without wanting to find quirky things in the cultures you visit."

Nobody could resent two such personable fellows for scouring the world for new material, but another reason might be to present unfamiliar views through the lens of an unusual relationship. With a packed itinerary and a mild sense of awe, Dara and Ed make for sensitive presenters and endearing tourists, but not riveting guides. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than telling Ed things,” says O’Briain of his earnest guidebook regurgitations. “I hope me and Dara aren’t going to fall out,” ventures Ed. So far, there’s no chance of that.

What Dara and Ed are more likely to share is an insight into how comedians see the world. “A country doesn’t exist until you’ve told a joke in it,” says Byrne, like comic solipsist. It’s amusing to visit a strutting display of prize Seramas – chickens that resemble body builders – with them in Kuala Lumpur, and fascinating to meet the displaced and wary Batek tribe in the Taman Negara rainforest. (“They’re really shy of new people,” the comedians are told. “Well, so are we,” replies Ed, not insincerely.)

But it’s more revealing that they translate new experiences into stand-up terms, each performing five minutes in a comedy club in the multicultural capital, later arsing around with the Lion Dance costumes like a pantomime horse in Genting Highlands, then turning their hands to shadow puppetry before an audience in Kota Bharu (and bombing). Finally they turn up for dinner in Penang in ceremonial garb that Tommy Cooper would have admired.

O’Briain regards Byrne, lost in his embroidered Kurta, and affirms, “I would be proud to attend any international karate tournament that you hosted on your evil island.” It’s the closest they allow themselves to come to a culturally inappropriate remark (which is not very) and also perhaps their funniest. Dara and Ed are going to get on just fine with South East Asia, and each other. Where’s the fun in that?