Voices of Ireland: Imelda May presents the Carroll’s gift shop version of Irish culture

You'd best have packed your umbrella because the cliches rain down thick and fast from the beginning of Voices Of Ireland (Sky Arts, 7pm). It starts with presenter Imelda May clopping through central Dublin in a horse-drawn cart. Presumably a donkey with freshly cut turf strapped to the side was not available on the day of filming.

Fiddles strike up, accompanied by footage of the sort of rolling hills where leprechauns frolic freely and Michael Flatley roams as a god among men. We see May thunking a bodhrán. Next the opening credits sweep in, accompanied by CGI-rendered images of Beckett, Yeats, Wilde and other writers familiar from the interior of pubs the length and breadth of Temple Bar.

This is the Carroll's gift shop version of Irish culture, where the writers who count are still Yeats and Beckett rather than Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry and Naoise Dolan

And then it's back to May walking through her native Liberties, a Virgin Mary grotto strategically placed over her shoulder. You keep expecting a scene in which the UK-based singer performs a duet of She Moves Through the Fair with Moya Brennan of Clannad as they descent a candle-lit stairs straight out of Lord of the Rings. But no, that's not until next week.

Voices of Ireland is unapologetic then, in pitching Ireland as quaint Celtic Disneyland. Or, more accurately, it casts Dublin in that light (the idea that there might be urban life beyond the M50 is something the series seems incapable of comprehending).

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This is the Carroll's gift shop version of Irish culture, where the writers who count are still Yeats and Beckett rather than Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry and Naoise Dolan. And where Irish music means Imelda May attending a "session" in parts rural, where everyone bashes a banjo and sips a pint (can you guess what they were drinking? Hint, it isn't craft beer). It could have been made in the 1990s – or even the 1890s.

Modern Ireland does occasionally nudge its way through. Dublin post-punk band Pillow Queens perform beneath the bandstand in St Stephen's Green. And there is an interview with the Irish-Nigerian poet Felicia Olusanya.

May is a charming presenter too. And someone who can keep her calm under pressure, as she does singing Raglan Road walking along South Anne Street, maintaining her poise when a group of young woman start whooping.

The purpose of the two-part documentary is to sell to tourists a vision of Ireland soggy with stereotypes

But all of this is window dressing. The purpose of the two-part documentary is to sell to tourists a vision of Ireland soggy with stereotypes. To that end May is, for her sins, required to churn out sentences such as “the streets of Dublin are well known for banter and slagging” and the Irish “always gravitate towards a session”.

Sky Arts has a track record in innovative programming, such as Charles Hazlewood’s video essay about Beethoven and the fly-on-the-wall profile of artist Marina Abramovic. This, though, is toe-curling tourist board filler – literally so, as it is produced in conjunction with Tourism Ireland.

And the portrait it presents of Ireland is of a sort of mystical theme park, where everyone always has a poem on their lips, a sad song at the back of their throat, and a pint to wash away their woes.