Into the Jungle with Ed Stafford review: Adventurer Ed's new programme shows you don't need the jungle to become a better dad, just a wet weekend in Wales

“Testing yourself in an extreme environment is an amazing way of building relationships,” he burbles, as he takes six concerned dads and their kids into the verdant expanses of the Belize hinterland.

The object is unclear, despite the voice-over asking: “Can doing something together you never thought possible make you a better dad?”

You'd have thought that doing similar team-building exercises – abseiling, canyoning, eating porridge outdoors – could be done on a wet weekend in Abersoch, but you suspect the programme-makers might have pooh-poohed the Llyn peninsula for not being exotic enough.

And Ed is firmly on the side of getting back to basics, having transplanted his wife and kids to the central American jungle in search of a better way of life.

“Modern life is rubbish,” he says, “it's getting in the way of us being good dads.”

But don't worry, just turn your mobile phone over to Ed and surrender to the humidity,

“Jungle is a place where magic can happen,” enthuses Ed. “It changed my life, it can change theirs too.”

What we don't hear is how magical the jungle for Ed's kids, as we don't hear from them, remaining shadowy presences. So we have to take Ed's word on the whole 'jungle makes for a happier family' assertion.

The six dads on the jungle jaunt aren't exactly the deadbeats you might have expected – which I guess is natural, seeing as they must be concerned enough about their relationships with their kids to have applied to go on the show in the first place.

And the filmed inserts of the families at home reinforce that view – these dads love their kids, want the best for them, and are determined to give them a better start in life than they had themselves.

What seems to have them confused is the onset of teenagerdom, when previously loving kids who would – by and large – doing anything you asked of them turn into raging hormone factories and can appear hard to reach.

It's unclear, however, how much a jolly in the jungle will help them, especially when Ed seems to be the type to give people something to do and then stand back and admire the fallout.

Sending them abseiling into a sinkhole, he watches as overbearing dad Jeff launches into a constant monologue at his petrified son Akai, never once intervening or advising.

Meanwhile, he can be crashingly insensitive. While roping up young Immy, who was born with a left forearm missing above the wrist, he says: “Your left hand – that you don't have – you don't need it.”

Several of the dads also seem to struggling with demons from their pasts, from growing up in care to the early loss of parents, which are bound to influence their own parenting.

And in this particular corner of the jungle there doesn't seem to be much help for them there either.

You assume, safeguarding issues and all, that there must have been psychologists and support on hand, but there is precious little evidence of that.

Of course, that might also have minimised the effects of the magical jungle and it's particular parenting powers.

By the end, you can't help feeling that the best way of helping these dads would have been to abandon the programme altogether and give them a course of family therapy and an equal portion of the budget – to help them take time off work, plan dad-and-kid activities and make life that little bit easier, that little bit less stressful.

And leave the jungle to Ed – and his invisible kids.