Television - An ex-adman presents a witty, erudite history of Christianity. By Andrew Billen The Battle for Britain's Soul (BBC2)

It takes a brave man to begin his new series by wheeling a barrowload of shit in the direction of the camera. But Peter Owen-Jones was rightly confident that no critic would dare say that what followed was excremental. The Battle for Britain's Soul (Mondays, 7pm), which has returned for its final four-part burst, is gimmicky, larky, pleased with itself and driven by its presenter's ego. It also works brilliantly. Sixty minutes on religious schisms in the 18th century? I was left wanting more.

Like most atheists, I keep my antennae extended to pick up special pleading for God on the BBC. I enjoyed, for example, what I saw of The Monastery (BBC2), in which five men were given a speed induction into a Benedictine monastery, but I thought it was remiss that no atheists were among the guinea pigs and that at least three of them were already spiritually inclined. I like Radio 4's Sunday programme, Today's dog-collared brother, but the recent uncritical obituary of M Scott Peck conveniently omitted to mention that the author of The Road Less Travelled was barking. (I met him this year, and that much would have been obvious even had I not known he promoted exorcism as a psychiatric tool.)

But this is only a preamble to saying that The Battle for Britain's Soul, whose mission is to relate the story of Christianity in Britain, is exemplary in keeping the propaganda out of the history lesson. In fact, the church comes off pretty badly a lot of the time - hence the barrow of human faeces, pushed by a parishioner one morning in the late 17th century towards his local church. The door of this house of God was painted with it, one of a number of protests against a clergy considered lazy, greedy, boozy and overfamiliar with the ladies. Owen-Jones told the story of how, over the following century, the corrupt monopoly of the Church of England was challenged and broken, not only by Jacobites, Methodists, Baptists and a strange breed of bucolic witch doctors known as cunning folk, but by an increasingly materialistic, scientific and enlightened society.

Owen-Jones took us to all the places that mattered, from the Hawksmoor church built in Spitalfields at four times its original budget, in an attempt to match the area's rival attractions, to the cave Bonnie Prince Charlie hid in six months after his defeat at Culloden. And in each location he visited, Owen-Jones put himself centre stage. To illustrate the 18th century's decadence, he settled into a stretch limo between two buxom lovelies. To prove its materialism, he bought a groovy hat in Jermyn Street. He played at Daniel Defoe in the stocks at King's Cross and made us think he was going to be pelted with rotten tomatoes. Then he revealed that Defoe was so popular that the crowds threw flowers at him instead (cue a short bout of daff-chucking). In the West Country he carried a steel ladder on his back. In a street in Bristol he climbed it and started preaching, just as John Wesley had. And to illustrate how witches were drubbed even after the Church of England had officially stopped believing in them (in 1736), he was trussed up and dunked into a swimming pool by jeering children. He floated, by the way - as did the programme.

No language was too anachronistic for Owen-Jones if it made his point. "Greed is good," he chanted. "Spend, spend, spend." Exploring Christ Church Spitalfields, he announced: "We have become one of those property make-over shows where a young woman comes in and says, 'I want bright. I want light. I want buckets of light and smooth lines . . .'" In a village shop, he asked the lady: "Do you possibly have anything I could use as a metaphor for God and creation?" He came out with a package, which he took to the local church to unwrap; it turned out to be a Scalextric set. Setting two cars off round its track, he explained - sort of - how Isaac Newton reconciled a mechanical universe with a divinity. Finally he ended up opening an envelope in a pulpit. And the winner in the 18th- century battle for Britain's soul was . . . Protestantism.

It did veer into Monty Python, but I am sure that was deliberate, because Owen-Jones is clearly a TV fan and of an age to have enjoyed both Python and the creaky old French Adventures of Robinson Crusoe serial the BBC used to show every summer. Clips from this were used to illustrate a sequence on Defoe, the believer who doubted the need for organised religion. There is no doubt either that, in his fancy waistcoat, felt hat and long coat, Owen-Jones dresses in homage to Tom Baker's Doctor Who. "Pete," as the BBC website chattily calls him, was discovered by producers during a brief appearance in the BBC4 series Church of England: the power and the glory in 2003. They surely could not believe their luck: a former farmworker-turned-adman-turned-vicar with GSOH - a genuine English eccentric but, also, an erudite man whose erudition does not dampen his enthusiasm. His account of faith in the 18th century was, I regret to say, much more fun than Jonathan Miller's evangelising history of "disbelief" on BBC4 last year. My only regret is that I missed the first series. I commend to you the rest of this.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

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