Natural World: Honey Badgers; The Trip – TV review

"If you push him into a corner then he will go for you," says a white Serf Ifrican farmer, about the subject and star of Honey Badgers (BBC2). "He will go for your balls, and he will get all your balls out, one time, as quick as that." Quick erz dit.

Jeez, how many balls do they have around here? Not as many – nor as big – as honey badgers which, according to Guinness World Records, is the world's most fearless animal. They'll take on porcupines, poisonous snakes, hyenas, lions even. Plus Afrikaner farmers and their dogs, no problem.

This BBC film crew isn't taking any risks. They're wearing cricket boxes to hang on to their own balls, all of them. Brock straps – except that the honey badger isn't really a badger at all, but more of a weasel. It's a mustelid if we're getting technical; a sort of furry four-legged Dennis Wise if we're not.

The BBC crew may go home with all their cojones, but their kit takes a right old bashing. GoPros are chewed to pieces, cables are severed, lights smashed, microphones shredded … honey badgers not only have no fear, but they also show no respect for the UK licence-fee payer.

Still, they get a good film out of it. In these days of high technology and short attention spans, it's tough getting an hour of television out of one animal. You need a few crazy people, and their pet projects, too. They're here – the young zoologist who's always been obsessed and wears a honey badger necklace, and conservationist Brian Jones, who's had a 20-year battle with a honey badger named Stoffle. It's a battle of wills, and of balls, of course. And there's only going to be one winner.

Elsewhere: lots of priceless moments and lines in The Trip to Italy (BBC), including the real Steve Coogan being a sort of fictional (although probably pretty real) Steve Coogan, being Roger Moore, being Alanis Morissette: "And I'm here to remind you/ Of the mess you left when you went away" … hahaha. It's more melancholic this time round, and funnier. I think it's the best thing on TV right now.