By Jeremy Clay

Phew, it’s Charlotte Uhlenbroek. That’s a relief. I was beginning to get a little worried about her.

A few years back, she was all over the telly. They called her the new Attenborough. And out of all the people being called the new Attenborough, she seemed to be the new Attenborough-iest.

Then she just vanished from our screens, like the teenage Tracy Barlow from Coronation Street. And at least Tracy had the courtesy to warn us she was going upstairs to listen to her tapes.

Anyway Charlotte’s back, with a new series on a new channel, Among The Apes (8pm, Five).

She’s a good host, is Charlotte; warm, giggly and not at all concerned about looking ragged in front of the camera. Nor, it seems, about having a dig at her employers.

“You’d think a tropical forest would be the perfect place to forget about the pressures of time,” she said as she tramped through a Ugandan nature reserve. “But when you’ve only got two weeks, every day counts.”

It wasn’t the only time she mentioned her tight filming schedule. After the BBC, perhaps she’s having trouble adjusting to Five’s budgets.

The show itself is a good-natured portrait of the lives of a bunch of chimps. Actually, let’s use the proper collective noun: a cartload of chimpanzees.

A cartload, ladies and gents. Apparently it’s a shrewdness of apes, too. And the collective noun for collective nouns... is a peculiar. I wonder if there’s any truth in the suggestion that it’s a shortage of dwarves. And while we’re at it, what’s the collective noun for critics? A disdain? A sneer? A uselessness?

I digress. Among The Apes is fine for a Sunday night. Uhlenbroek turned the lives of the chimps into a little soap opera, full of rows and power struggles.

There was even a personal journey for the chief chimp, who started off as a lonely despot facing revolt in the ranks and ended up as a dearly loved leader.

And all this just so happened to coincide with the very fortnight Charlotte was there. Hmm.

It’s probably all for the best that apes – like the dead – can’t sue.

And it’s also all for the best that we’ve managed to ditch most of the traits of our close relatives. Male chimps, it seems, are in the habit of obsequiously cupping the testicles of their leader as he passes.

Worried about your job? Perhaps you could give that a whirl with your boss.

There was nothing especially new in James May On The Moon (9pm, BBC2). Plenty of others have interviewed moonwalk astronauts, and May certainly wasn’t the first presenter to endure one of those spinny space training G-force things.

But the whole show, from start to finish, was thoroughly enjoyable, thanks to May’s enthusiasm and self-deprecating commentary.

In a world of feminised TV, it was nice to see something unashamedly boyish.