Painting the World, BBC2 Tuesday 7.30-8pm January 17 to February 7, repeated 12-12.30pm January, 23 to February 13. Teacher’s 64-page guide Pounds 4. 95, video Pounds 12.99. Mail order sales, National Gallery Publications, 5-6 Pall Mall East, London SW1Y 5BA. Painting The World, BBC2‘s new four-part series written and presented by the National Gallery’s director, Neil MacGregor, seems to have all the essential ingredients to make it a success with both well-educated, mature teachers and their less-experienced but equally-demanding students.

On the assumption that every great painting is its own world, but one into which we can, with a little help and effort, enter, MacGregor has chosen to interpret not only the key picture in each 30-minute programme, but a nice selection of related works (all from the National Gallery collections) as attempts by different people at different times to establish their place in the overall scheme of things.

Hans Memlinc’s “The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors” (the Donne Triptych), Paolo Veronese’s “The Family of Darius before Alexander”, Peter Paul Rubens’s “An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning” and Joseph Wright of Derby’s “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” may not be everyone’s choice of key pictures but they serve MacGregor’s purposes admirably, taking us by well-measured and clearly-presented stages from the God-centred universe of the late Middle Ages to the decidedly secular, urban-industrial world of the 19th century. This is no mean achievement and one made all the more persuasive by MacGregor’s infectious enthusiasm.

Admittedly, MacGregor’s approach has in-built appeal, readily responding to the majority’s first demand that a picture reveal its meaning before how or why it was painted. But it is his relaxed, accessible, yet always authoritative manner that is most likely to gain and maintain attention.

Carlo Crivelli’s 15th century “Annunciation” is deftly summed up as “a huge altarpiece and one of the most stylish pieces of local government propaganda ever made”, while a whole sequence of disclosures related to Wright’s “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” leads to MacGregor’s quite devastating observation that life and death here are dispersed not by God but by a travelling entertainer. It is an arresting performance that easily transcends the occasionally-starchy manner in which it is filmed.

In general, MacGregor is well served by the entire production team. There can be little doubt that he was as keen as anyone to promote the National Gallery as possessor of a fine collection of European paintings, which explains the to-ing and fro-ing between rooms, but he has nevertheless kept the pictures and his commentary in the foreground of our attention. So much so that the magnifications of the camera enable him to point out significant details usually overlooked, like the hare losing the race and its life against the train in Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great Western Railway”.

Thanks to close collaboration between the National Gallery and BBC Education, basic information that can be tedious stuff delivered on screen, like the facts and figures of an artist’s life and career, are confined to a jointly-published booklet. For GCSE, A-level and other students of art and humanities, this booklet is an invaluable addition to the programmes and video.

Quotations from MacGregor’s commentary are interspersed with more detailed information on the pictures, the artists who painted them and those for whom they were made, as well as suggestions for further reading. Together, the video and booklet should be in every school and college library.