Cruising to the Ends of the Earth is not, as the title might suggest, a programme about cruisers heroically disappearing into unchartered parts of the Arctic with a compass and a sun hat. But rather, an exciting eight-part Channel 4 series about Princess Cruises; exciting largely because the line has sensibly worked out that the best way to make cruising look impressive is to not spend the hour pointing the cameras at the sundeck... 

The series starts on Sunday 26 April at 8pm and was filmed across four Princess ships, Sun Princess, Discovery Princess, Royal Princess and Diamond Princess, with voyages taking in the Mediterranean, Alaska, Japan and South Korea. Greg Wise narrates, which helps give the whole thing the air of a proper television event as opposed to just another travelogue.

And while you might arrive at this programme for a nosey around some of Princess's most impressive ships, you'll stay for the geography. This is not one of those series where you'll feel you’ve seen the same pool deck in slightly different weather. Princess has gone for range: picturesque Mediterranean ports, Alaska making everything else look a bit insignificant, followed by sojourns to Japan and South Korea, which give the programme a different texture altogether. It also happens to show the very best of the line rather nicely. Sun Princess brings the newer-generation glamour, Diamond Princess reinforces Princess’s long-running Japan presence, with the whole thing adding up to a comprehensive picture that says: yes, we do still do familiar, large-ship cruising, but we are not confined to one mood, one market or one type of passenger.

More importantly, the series seems to understand that the real fascination of a cruise is not that a ship has restaurants and a spa. Land has both of those. The interesting bit is that thousands of people are being moved through several countries while being fed, entertained, reassured and tidied up after. Princess says the series follows captains, engineers, dancers and chefs, which is promising, because ships are at their most compelling when you understand their true scale: half hotel, half machine and half travelling theatre company (yes, I know that's three halves, but cruise ships have always been mathematically unreasonable).

The press material leans heavily on the people behind each voyage, and which is exactly where the best stories usually live. Guests may provide the tears, sun hats and occasionally baffling dinner-table anecdote, but it is the crew who give a ship its plot. A captain can get you through an Alaskan fjord. An engineer can keep a huge vessel functioning. A chef can feed a small nation. 

There is, obviously, a mild sales pitch humming away underneath all this. Princess would like you to watch Alaska, Japan and the Med glide by and think, “well, that looks rather good”. Fair enough, because it does. Cruise lines have rarely been in the business of accidental publicity. But there is a more interesting secondary aim here, which is to make the line look broader, slicker and more current than your preconceptions might have you believe. Princess has heritage, scale and a lot of name recognition, but television like this lets it suggest something more expansive. Not old-school, not ultra-luxury, not expedition cosplay. Just a very competent global operator with enough reach to make one series feel like several different holidays.

And that may be the real value of Cruising to the Ends of the Earth. Not that it will persuade hardened non-cruisers to book a suite by the closing credits, (though stranger things have happened), but that it might make the whole business look more accessible. Cruising is still oddly easy to caricature from the outside. A series that shows the crew hierarchy, the moving parts, the destination shifts and the sheer administrative ballet of getting a ship through four very different regions could do something more useful than simple aspiration. It could remind viewers that a cruise is not just a holiday product. It is a ridiculous, intricate, highly organised travelling world, and that is usually where the good television begins.

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