BBC’s Pilgrimage is a beautiful picture of difference that doesn’t have to become division

As BBC’s feel-good faith series returns for its eighth installment, AJ Gomez reviews Pilgrimage discovering that while dramatic conversions may not feature, watching strangers search for something greater than themselves – and love one another along the way – can be just as compelling

“A Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a pod,” jests Hasan Al-Habib, as he and two of his fellow pilgrims, Ashley Banjo and Ashley Blake, enter the accommodation where they’ll stop for the night along their 390km journey.

At a premiere screening of the eighth season of BBC Two’s Pilgrimage at the Garden Cinema in London, it drew the biggest laugh of the season’s first episode. But in its own unserious way, it serves as an unintentionally fitting summary of what the show sets out to do.

The format remains familiar. Seven well-known personalities of differing backgrounds and beliefs set off together on a shared journey, check marking locations of Christian significance along the way.

This year’s pilgrimage unfolds over 12 days, covering 390km by foot and bus along the north-eastern coast of England and through Northumberland, before culminating at Lindisfarne, a tidal island said to be the holiest place in the country.