IAN HYLAND on last night’s telly

Travels In Trumpland With Ed Balls, ★★★★

Anyone who watched Ed Balls on Strictly knows he’s up for a challenge, no matter how much pain and embarrassment it might cause him.

He definitely packed that ethos into his suitcase when he went to America for this excellent BBC2 series – which is a bit like Louis Theroux, only with added laughs.

In the opening episode we saw Ed suffer the embarrassment of wearing an unforgiving Union Jack wrestling leotard before accepting the pain of a flying slam from his opponent. I think he stepped it up a gear last night though...

As part of his rookie training with the Louisiana police Ed agreed to be tasered. Poor Ed went down faster than Brendan Cole’s approval rating in the last end-ofseries Strictly production meeting – but I’m guessing it wasn’t the most pain he’s suffered lately.

That came when Ed watched the footage of this series and realised he’d regained all the weight he’d lost during his Strictly stint.

In his defence, the outfits didn’t help. The leotard was bad enough but the luminous yellowy-green jumpsuit he wore when he went litter picking with remand

inmates last night was even worse. That’s the great thing about this show though. It manages to slip between comic interludes and serious moments without it ever looking awkward.

If anything, it adds extra power to the serious bits, such as the tears Ed shed after his interview with Parklands shooting survivor Samantha Fuentes.

The only thing missing is an interview with Trump himself.

By the looks of the trailer for next Sunday’s finale the closest Ed got was an audience with the spray tan lady at Trump’s Mar-a-lago resort.

I think you can guess what happened next.