Empire, BBC One

The scene is ineffably English. The thock of mallet on ball, the clack of ball through hoop, the gentle sun adding a benediction. A senior gent in natty English threads looks on from the pavilion, a member of this club for 55 years. Everything is just so, apart the setting: Cairo. “Was there nothing good the British did here?” wondered Jeremy Paxman. Apart from croquet. “All kinds of imperialism is bad,” ventured his host with a wily smile.

Technically Egypt wasn’t part of the empire. We just hung around there for 70 years to keep an eye on the canal connecting the tiny island called home with the large pot of gold called India. Long after the first Consul-General departed, Egyptians finding themselves in England would make their way to Bournemouth to spit on his grave.

If he sounded appalled he also looked furtively impressed

With Paxman on the bridge, Empire has embarked on a six-hour voyage into our past. It aims to test the argument that the British sowed nothing but sorrow and mayhem as they conquered the globe. A BBC man might be assumed to nurture pinko guilt about the pink bits of the map. Particularly one who always looks mildly disgusted by powermongers and politicians. But it’s clear that Paxman does not lug a sackload of modish Anglo-Saxon attitudes about our blood-stained history of conquest and oppression. As he toured the monumental symbols of British dominance in India, he seemed if anything in shock - that a small country fired by both greed and a civilising imperative could at one point hold sway over a quarter of the world’s population. He called it a gigantic confidence trick, an enormous bluff, and if he sounded appalled he also looked furtively impressed. If not as impressed as the Daily Mail celebrating Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee procession with a special edition printed in gold ink.

Watch a clip of Queen's Victoria's Diamond Jubilee procession

This first episode dealt with the spread of British power, from the acquisition of India through to the ignominious flight from Palestine. As he made his way around the haunts of Empire, he had the same question for everyone he met. What did the British ever do for you lot? We met His Highness Gaj Singh II of Manwar-Jodhpur (Eton, Oxon), whose ancestor got an astonishing palace out of it. By a fireside in the Sinai desert an admirer exonerated Lawrence of Arabia of the British betrayal: “In this land,” he said through gritted teeth and an interpreter, “nobody ever keeps their promises.” And then on to Jerusalem, where the hotel housing the British headquarters was blown up in 1946. An ancient Israeli woman who had once scouted the premises and told the terrorists where to plant their bombs could not be persuaded by Paxman that the Jews owed the Brits a debt of thanks for the Balfour Declaration. “We were satisfied,” she said in the very hotel where 65 years ago she’d helped to kill 91 people. “It was a mission. It was a symbol of the British here. And we hit it.”

There are other reasons to make a date with Empire beyond Paxman’s clear, uncluttered narrative. This is a landmark series at which money has been hurled, and it shows in gorgeous cinematic production values. Chris Nicolaides’s lush soundtrack and Mike Garner’s magnificent photography both make the most of peach sunsets and epic architecture. And through it all Paxman strolls in a blue linen shirt, trying not to look as if he’d have once blended in seamlessly as an instrument of imperial ruler. No hopping on desert donkeys for him, and only desultory clapping at the polo in Jodhpur. None of that monkeying around patented by Andrew Marr. He kept his hands in his pockets.

And at the death there was something you don’t hear from Paxman. Walking along the wall freshly erected by the Israelis to keep the Arabs out, he recalled a previous wall on which had been daubed the words “Tommies go home.” “Beneath it someone wrote, ‘I wish we fucking well could.’” Riveting television.