“What we went through will be difficult to understand even for our contemporaries,” an uncredited voice intoned at the opening of this episode, “and much more difficult for the generations that have already no personal experience of those days.” Spoken over footage of a ruined German concentration camp, it was an introduction as striking as it was candid, almost conceding the difficulties in taking on the cumulative memories and associations that have sprung up around one of the darkest periods of human history. Yet what followed seemed far from remote or unapproachable.

The key was the relationship between the images and narration. With a subject boasting so vast an infamy and compass, at no other point in the entire series was it perhaps more necessary to underscore words with pictures. Something else was needed to render the horrific notions and ideals of the Holocaust in full dimension, if only to offset occasional traces of ambiguity entertained – albeit unwittingly – by the commentary.

But trying to stitch together a historical analysis that aspires to being both accessible and definitive involves a cautious management of resources. Sometimes there are occasions when it’s not enough to let a picture or photo speak for itself, no matter how devastating its contents. At the same time, applying sound effects all over a piece of silent film in order to make it seem more alive can backfire horribly if – as happened on several occasions here – the noises call undue attention to themselves.

With this episode, it became clear as the first vintage Nazi propaganda newsreel rolled that what we were to see and also to hear could only be effectively reconciled in a way that was to make immediate and affecting television by the narrator. There was no doubting this was an awesome responsibility – a case, in essence, of ensuring that the obvious needed to be stated in as unambiguous and uncompromising a way possible, but to avoid doing it artlessly or being overtly patronizing. Indeed, almost as if to concede the status and gravitas of such a position, The World at War had signed up one of the most respected British actors of all time for just such a task.

Unfortunately, Laurence Olivier’s much-lauded commentary just sounded perilously idiosyncratic. As it is, a text that continually jumps between the past and the present tense tests the mettle of even the most accomplished of voice-over artists, with the need to sustain an impression of authority rather than indecision paramount. For the most part Olivier seemed to have approached this challenge as if faced with an extended dramatic soliloquy, but to these ears his apparent inexperience in emoting through voice alone seemed to undermine his valiant attempts to master an occasionally tortured and jumbled mass of prose.

On one level the problem was purely semantic. Olivier’s predisposition towards both the ludicrous stage whisper and the booming, pompous-sounding outburst could be explained away as an effort to imbue a rough-edged script with some dynamism and substance. Yet despite his best efforts, the acutely delicate task of re-voicing and articulating contemporary sentiment bordered on the incongruous. “The Jews started the war – now let them clear up the mess,” he snarled at one point, trying to mimic the thoughts of a particular strand of Nazi German society; but what was presumably intended as a statement to shock and startle came over as, frankly, rather lazy contrivance, poorly conceived and badly delivered.

This ties up with a more complex problem, however, that is arguably manifest throughout The World at War but was particularly tangible in this episode: essentially, how to account for, through a perfectly fathomable and self-evident sequence of arguments and witnesses, acts of unfathomable carnage and monstrosity. On the one hand, to even give the appearance of imposing a veneer of logic onto an act such as the Holocaust might run the risk of suggesting it remains an event that can be explained away solely through reason and consequence – in other words, because nobody spoke out or stood up against it, there was an element of complicity at work. From here it’s a short step to painting the entire War as being simply that because “a” didn’t stand up to “b” then “c” happened.

Alternatively, how else to approach something as overwhelming as the attempted gassing of an entire race than by zeroing in on blunt, basic realities: facts, figures, and the raw emotion of those who survived? After all, in some instances allusion and understatement are just not enough. You almost feel that the truth needs to be stated forcefully, and repeatedly, to render plain a context in which we can connect with something that threatens to fade ever further into the past. Holocaust, genocide, extermination – these are difficult subjects of near infinite sensitivity. Accordingly The World at War, viewed today (and we should remember the programme was made in the mid 1970s), seems to have greatest resonance when its crude qualifications and fancy linguistic chicanery is rested, and the spoken words of eyewitnesses, plus original archive footage, are given the spotlight.

It was here, at last, that the programme’s oft-proclaimed triumphs were rendered most explicit. Sometimes protracted clips of interviewees delivering stilted testimony, doggedly translated by an off-screen anonymous voice, felt like the programme was trying too hard to be definitive – as if 5000 words from a rambling politician would have more impact and relevance than 50. Still, out of his own mouth Lord Avon – erstwhile “peace in our time” champion Neville Chamberlain – nigh-on condemned himself and his peers in reckoning a minutes silence in the House of Commons was somehow a fitting response to hearing the first confirmation of the concentration camps. And then there were the reminiscences of those actually there in person, pretending to lie dead underneath a heap of bodies or dodging bullets in one of the many specially-built Jewish ghettos. One woman recalled a dialogue with her daughter: “She said, ‘Let’s run away, they’re killing us, why do we just stand here? Why do people stand and not run away, why are they standing?’ I said to her, ‘Where are we going to run to?’”

The testimony of ordinary people labouring to create an existence in the most extraordinary of circumstances: this remains The World at War‘s enduring instruction on how best to remember the importance of World War II, and the Holocaust. Yet the series also represents a cautionary lesson in the organization of archive material in conjunction with contemporary interpretation. Images, such as a tractor shovelling human corpses, will always stay with you. Words, if layered on too thick or self-consciously pruned back to a bare minimum, can if not chosen correctly disappear from the memory as swift and as silent as the switching off of a television set.

Whether these mitigating factors should have tempered our judgement to last Christmas’ outing is debatable; one could certainly argue that they were reason enough not to bring back the series in the first place. But whatever the problem was, this time around Sullivan seemed insistent that this year’s Christmas story, “Strangers on the Shore”, would be an OFAH episode of the old school – one that could have taken place at any point in the series’ history.

This reviewer’s hopes were therefore raised, albeit slightly, and it has to be said that the slice of OFAH we were offered up this time around was certainly superior to last year’s. Unfortunately, however, on any other terms it was still a disappointment. OFAH‘s been in a rut before. In truth, the rot probably set in when the series simply became a string of Christmas specials from 1991 onwards (with “Miami Twice” and the following year’s “Mother Nature’s Son” as particular lowpoints). The programme’s return in 1996, however, was an epiphany of sorts. Up until then it seemed that throughout the 1990s the programme had established a level of affection with the public that was contrary to its current form. The ’96 trilogy, though, finally found the series back at its best, and living up to the reception it was given. Of course it should all have ended there.

The problem, then, with the current rut is that Sullivan has no leeway to write himself out of it. This year’s OFAH, like last year’s, is being packaged (no pun intended) as the BBC’s Christmas present to us. Expectations rise, the show doesn’t deliver … and that’s it till next year. One feels that if Sullivan was back wirting a proper six-part series (and the fact that he isn”t has been – in part – his decision) he’d soon be able to find his voice again. Instead all we’re getting is a yearly grandstand, where all of the supporting cast have to be accommodated within one story because – well, it’s not Only Fools without Denzil, Mickey Pearce or even Sid (who he?) again, is it? In truth, the rich array of secondary characters that OFAH enjoys were used sparingly during the series proper run. Nowadays, we get them all sat around a table in the Nag’s Head, all with at least one line of dialogue, but all just name-badge versions of the real characters. This isn’t Only Fools and Horses – it’s an Only Fools and Horses convention.

So what did “Strangers on the Shore” have going for it? The core plotline, wherein Del and Rodney find themselves lumbered with an apparent illegal emigrant did have the essence of old-style OFAH. The script quite cleverly kept the connection between this story and Boycie’s dealings with a France based business acquaintance (in that the alien was actually the son of the acquaintance) quite well obscured until the final reveal. Unfortunately, alongside this was a lot of irrelevant stuff relating to the deceased Uncle Albert’s wartime sexploits and the paternity of a whole French village. After last year’s burial of Albert, it perhaps would have been better if the show had dropped all reference to the character. This may seem a little callous, but these whimsical remembrances of “Unc” have quickly become maudlin.

Alas, there were other failings present here too, although some were textbook OFAH weaknesses. As ever the script seemed to have a preoccupation with name-checking current cultural artefacts. It almost appears that Sullivan is so desperate for the show to prove it’s still of its time that he feels he must allude to being “as thick as Phil Mitchell” (although this is at least better than basing the second half of the show around an extended parody of Who Wants to be a Millionaire – cf. last year’s episode). Somehow, it just doesn’t sit well – maybe because the joke that delivered the observation was rather weak. Alongside this, we still had Damien talking in that cod-gangsta rappa dialect (which seemed passé last year, let alone this time around). More unusually, however, there were moments when the show seemed to grasp at gags with desperation. Del’s telephone conversation with Monkey Harris was an example, wherein after speaking to him quite normally throughout the background of a scene, he suddenly started dropping his name into every reply when the camera focussed back on him again. “Yes, Monkey .. OK, Monkey, Goodbye, Monkey….” Why? So he could quip: “that was Monkey” upon hanging up. Painfully convoluted, obviously telegraphed and not very funny.

OK, so we’re nit-picking here, but it’s hard to help yourself when you’re watching such a limp version of a previously excellent series. Where Only Fools and Horses used to be fast, funny and confident, it’s now a kind of embarrassing footnote that serves only to deflate the latter half of Christmas Day. But the worst of it is, the cumulative effect this OFAH revival has had for me is to cause me to groan when I spot that three-wheeler van in BBC1′s Christmas trailers. And – mon dieu! – that’s a real shame.

Nonetheless, and perhaps somewhat against all odds, the new Treasure Hunt has delivered. Dermot Murnaghan for one has proved to be a consummate host. He settled so easily into the role it felt he had already served time learning and perfecting the arts of swapping avuncular banter with an unseen person down the end of an earpiece, and of making members of the public feel completely at ease in front of the camera. He also seemed particularly well versed in the subtle – and not so subtle – craft of dropping hints and conveniently stumbling upon answers just when it looked like all hope was lost.

Of course, the issue of just how much the host of Treasure Hunt knows about the clues in advance has always been a contentious one, but on this occasion the gentle nudges and “sudden” uncovering of vital information appeared less smooth and far more obvious than in Kenneth Kendall’s day. Maybe it was because there was less time on the clock and therefore less room to allow even the tiniest errors or a protracted bout of dithering. After all, with a limit of 40 minutes instead of 45, no commercial breaks, but five clues still to be solved, the format necessarily had to be tighter than before – hence no space for jovial misunderstandings or airy discussions of imponderables.

Indeed, the contestants certainly needed to be up to speed to crack all clues in the time available. When they were committed, enthusiastic and willing to get involved, Dermot’s role appeared to be a lot easier than when they were serial ditherers or, worse, disinclined to say anything whatsoever. The fourth of the five programmes had the misfortune to be blessed with a hopelessly tongue-tied and disengaged pair, meaning Dermot had to virtually helm the entire hunt himself. It made for a rather disheartening experience – the levels of artifice being laid so bare and so often – but even in other episodes, where the contestants were remarkably astute and engaging, Dermot’s tendency towards the overstated tip-off rather than the discreet intimation robbed the show of a little of its enduring charm. Still, at least he never went in for any of the slightly undignified “you might think I know the clues in advance – well, I don’t” patter of his predecessor.

Given how Wincey Willis’ role had been swapped for that of a freestanding electronic map – or “satellite tracker” as Dermot endearingly persisted in calling it – the mood in the studio relied wholly on the relationship Dermot was able to strike up with his contestants. Here he was almost always lucky in landing people who were not only very dedicated but also amiable and spirited as well – like himself.

As the week wore on, it became clear that stock of very bookish, plucky and a little excitable personnel that turned up week in week out during Treasure Hunt‘s original run had not diminished with the passing years. Finding just as many software programmers, budding cartographers and particularly historical enactment enthusiasts (a pastime, they were at pains to point out, which was most definitely “educational” as well as “fun”) in evidence as there were during the original run was a welcome discovery. Moreover, to see them behind the map table and grappling with the reference books – and, in another gesture to the 21st century, a CD-ROM – was wholly reassuring and went a big way in ensuring the revival’s success.

The most crucial element of all, however, was the identity and personality of the skyrunner. To think that among the names originally mooted were, supposedly, the hapless ex-Big Breakfast host Amanda Byram, or the equally wooden RI:SE presenter Liz Bonnin. After all five of this week’s shows, it’s now almost impossible to see how it could ever have been anyone other than Suzi Perry. Just as with Dermot, she seemed to find her feet right from the off. Totally at ease with her role and responsibilities, plus the esteemed reputation of her long-serving predecessor, Suzi proved to be a masterstroke of casting.

For connoisseurs of the original, her tendency for talking at the same time as those in the studio, or for holding up proceedings due to problems hearing what she was being told, was extremely nostalgic. But she also demonstrated a marvellously easy rapport with people she had to meet out and about, and a fine line in rakish wit with Dermot. Then there was her persistence in wanting to know where she should go and what she should do: something of a departure from the Anneka Rice approach of letting the team in the studio set their own pace, and one that was, for the most part, quite effective and invigorating.

Another link with the past lurked out on location. Suzi struck up a close bond with her crew in the field, but none more so – and it was a really great touch to have him back again – than veteran Treasure Hunt helicopter pilot Keith Thompson. One motif from the original that was sorely missed, however, was the superlative title theme music of Zack Lawrence. Instead, a wholly unsatisfactory effort turned up, written by someone obviously trying to emulate Lawrence’s original, but failing, and forgetting to come up with any sort of recognisable tune in the process.

Noting its return to screens, The Guardian this week chose to put a decidedly negative spin on Treasure Hunt‘s ratings, regarding 2.5m viewers as some kind of failure and comparing it with the 7m it averaged in the mid-’80s. Hopefully the BBC will ignore this and any similar carping; for Treasure Hunt, on this evidence at any rate, remains as tense and compelling a show as it ever was. Moreover it’s proved itself able to stand the test of time, and evolve a character and attitude that feels both fresh and familiar at once. It deserves to be recommissioned and return to TV as soon as possible.

Generally in TV, if you’ve got a clunker of a show, the whole nation knows about it and are ready to mock accordingly. Even Fame Academy, while having seemingly everyone admitting by the final that it was their secret love, only managed figures for the final that equalled those of the much-mocked first series of Survivor. What chance RI:SE, a show which started and, brief doubling due to exclusive Big Brother coverage aside, remains at 200,000 viewers has of improving its image is negligible.

Three editors, five lost presenters and eight months ago, Ian Jones concluded of the first show that it “trades on the maxim ‘safety first’ – truly the very worst aspiration for Channel 4 to peddle.” Rather than as a damning review, you might be forgiven for thinking the producers had taken this as a maxim to guide the show by – bizarrely, and almost certainly uniquely, this was a last show of the year that felt like every other show, the only nods to the festive season being a joke shop singing moose on the still overlarge presenters’ desk and snow effects on the big screens. With the only other guest Grant Bovey, currently doing the rounds promoting this Christmas’ Celebrity Boxing, dispatched within the first half-hour, that left the big guests as being Girls Aloud and One True Voice, constantly talked up as the biggest musical conflict in years (“I think you’ll be able to taste the excitement … you can cut the tension with a knife in the studio”), when they’ve done at least two previous mutual joint interviews and the supposed acrimony amounted to artificial playground insults, and those probably suggested by their managers. If the presentation of the two bands as warring pop factions was one big exercise in irony, it was very subtly done in universally broad strokes. When one emailer asked if the boys would regret being put together by reality TV, one almost mumbled “no, because, y’know, Daniel’s a good songwriter”, as if surprised by a possibly critical question. Notably, while One True Voice were cut off by adverts, the girls were allowed to complete their song and a few minutes later disappear without prior warning on motorbikes to their undisclosed next port of call. It may look good in the Bizarre column, but to the viewer it smacks of record company-aided laziness. Just because you tell people something is exciting doesn’t necessarily mean it actually is, a seemingly clichéd observation that the show should have taken on board long before now.

So what of the presenters, the facet that has come in for the most criticism? When the show started, Henry Bonsu and Colin Murray were talked up as the news specialists – both are music radio DJs – while Edith Bowman and Liz Bonnin were the entertainment reporters. Bonsu disappeared a few weeks in and Murray left in October as the news mandate that suggested that, unlike its predecessor, a massive news story need not mean the show be postponed, evaporated. Durden-Smith maintains what Ian described as “deliberately trying to contrive a personality, any personality”, often pointlessly shouting and at one point sitting on the aforementioned moose in a vain and frankly David Brent-esque attempt to be “wacky”. Bowman and Bonnin, meanwhile, are cast as a Trinny and Susannah for Heat obsessives, delivering on-tap supposed sarcasm at the drop of a script. But isn’t this all a false economy? I’ve never seen Bonnin before she started on the show, but as far as I can tell neither Durden-Smith nor Bowman had adoped these personalities in their respective presenting styles before. It’s as if the production team had heard second-hand about the balance of power between presenters and regulars on the Big Breakfast and tried to recreate what they imagined it was like. But Bowman was wearing a hat, so she must be stylish and with the times.

Worse was to come. For a last show before Christmas, you expect all manner of bells and whistles, presenter surprises and montages of the year’s guests and highlights. What you don’t expect is, after two hours of unfestive ennui, a last link in which Edith and Liz tried to give thanks for celebrities who had sent them Christmas cards while One True Voice blew party horns and attempted to shout jokes about how they would be travelling to their remaining publicity duties and an unexplained dog set about the moose – that’s the Christmas effects budget gone, then – before a half drowned out Mark bade “a big thank-you to all our co-presenters and to the world in general” before playing out with the same film of celebrities (Sandy from Big Brother!) singing Shakin’ Stevens’ Merry Christmas Everyone that had been played an hour previously. And a happy christmas to you too, Princess Productions. The only semblance of an off-autocue surprise in the whole show was when one of Blue was shown on tape declaring he fancied Bonnin, which she pretended to be flustered by while Mark laddishly suggested “give him a ring, see what happens.”

The very least you expect of a show that has been universally panned in its opening weeks is some sort of noticeable improvement with metaphorical fireworks and, especially in the competitive breakfast market, something to hang the show’s hook on that is distinct and eye-catching enough to win over viewers. Yet eight months on, all that’s really changed on face value is the dropping of the news ticker some time in July. News and sport look more contractually obliged than ever, Chris Rogers and Kirsty Gallagher never gaining so much as a reference outside their specialist spheres for all their mugging to camera and the sport competition question being to name the player Sophie Anderton is currently dating, while the facile quarter-hour entertainment bulletins are built up like a major item. The rest boils down to the same promotional interviews as everyone else, right down to the lines of questioning, conducted by presenters seemingly keen not to project any of their own personalities beyond what was said in the production meeting. What’s the point, especially on the nominally get up and go Channel 4, of following everyone else’s example, and the lowest common denominator thereof to boot? The Big Breakfast may not on paper have been much more, but at its height, a time which should not be confused with its dying days, the array of experts and features was unmissable viewing. The concept of including “watercooler moments” may be the dread of the discerning viewer, but RI:SE would be advised to include some, otherwise it boils down to a completely forgettable set of features day after day.

RI:SE relocates in the New Year, losing Chris, Kirsty and Liz, not that they were given proper farewells during their last show, and moving to a purpose-built studio inside a shopping centre, a move which you suspect the production crew came up with as a homage to This Morning on Albert Dock or even GMTV‘s Get Up and Give campaign specials, but is actually reminiscent of the predecessor’s ill-fated relaunch with Sharron Davies and Rick Adams. The other sports anchor Helen Chamberlain, also a former Big Breakfast stand-in supposedly at Johnny Vaughan’s behest, has presented three shows during the last week and equipped herself relatively well, but it’s worth remembering that she was a launch presenter of Channel 5′s Live and Dangerous five and a half years ago and quit after six weeks because she was missing Soccer AM so much. Imagine what sport the tabloids would have if that were repeated. More than a change of personnel, however, RI:SE desperately needs a complete shift in direction, something unlikely to happen with a new editor coming in from a showbiz background that threatens to take the show even further down the faux-cynicism route. “Maybe subsequent revamps will leaven the show with traces of distinction and worth” Ian concluded back on 20 April – it’s looking increasingly unlikely.

As you watched, inevitable feelings of warm recollection at archive footage – such as evocative extracts from the programme’s Gulf War coverage in January 1991, replete with a suitably subdued, purple-shaded studio set – mixed with marked wonder at how quickly so many political names of the 1990s have so utterly faded out of view. “Margaret Thatcher – remember her?” quipped Humphrys, but pictures taken from the end of her Premiership did felt weirdly remote from today as if from another lifetime.

A judicious sequencing of old and new material went on to construct a useful overview of the consistencies and the ruptures of recent UK political life, laying evidence of change and of continuity open for the viewer to make sense of as they saw fit. Here was Tony Blair saying one thing in 1994, here he was saying another eight years on: it was left to us to draw our own conclusions. A piece on the long-term fortunes of the Liberal Democrats traced events back to a by-election in Newbury in 1993, while fascinating clips of the contenders fighting to replace Mrs Thatcher in 1990 reminded you how some overwhelmingly ubiquitous characters (Douglas Hurd, John Major) are now almost vanished from public life, while others (Michael Heseltine) are still able to win headlines.

There was also room for a nicely put together round-up of more light-hearted business, which for On the Record meant a telephone going off during an interview with Heseltine at his house, and John Prescott vouching on air to it being “a damn good programme”. Then, as the final minutes ticked by, John Humphrys couldn’t help but sound a bit emotional – “More than that, a great privilege too … what we’ve tried to do is take politics seriously … thanks to you for being such a loyal audience.” Endings of any kind are by design always moving and quite arresting; so it was here, as the credits rolled, the laconic clay-mation crocodile – always one of the best things about the show – heaved itself onto its feet one final time, swallowed a fantastically long list of all the current production team, then slumped onto the ground again weeping swollen tears from its lazy eye.

It was undoubtedly a fine tribute, but the slick choice of clips and shrewd editing couldn’t help but give the impression that On the Record was consistently one of the best political discussion shows around, whereas in reality for as many points scored there were prejudices aired, and more often than not set piece interviews collapsed into unashamed hectoring. Looking back, there was always a rather presumptuous feel to proceedings, of the kind that presupposed an uninterrupted two-handed dialogue between presenter and politician obviously meant good television, and anyone who disagreed was a base, rather ignorant fool.

To assume that anything deserves to be on TV simply for what it is rather than for how it explores and exploits the medium of telly itself, and crucially how it can establish a rapport with viewers, is the kind of lumpen thinking that has its origins back with the grisly Weekend World. Perhaps the epitome of television for the sake of it, Weekend World was never about educating and enthusing viewers about politics; it was simply about poking sharp sticks in the eyes of a dozen of so TV executives to prove tedious points about how current affairs should be packaged on the small screen.

Only the most charismatic and imaginative of TV execs can get away with making programmes purely to piss off other TV execs, usually because they remember the bargaining power of the most important factor of all: the loyalty and respect of us, the viewers. The team behind Weekend World, however, appeared to revel in their programme’s lamentable ratings, as if believing that, in some kind of Orwellian fashion, the more the audience tuned out the more they were doing right.

Of course the series eventually turned Sunday lunchtimes on both the BBC and ITV into a wilderness of gainsaying and catcalling that was as outrageous as it was boring. On the Record to its credit was never quite as indigestible or ponderous as Weekend World, but did persist for way too long in tacitly endorsing the notion that to appear to be in anyway “populist” on a political news programme is tantamount to a terrible blasphemy.

Complicit in this assumption were not just the politicians themselves but media commentators who seemed to encourage a climate where the obvious and practical idea of moving the main evening news on BBC1 from 9pm to 10pm was in fact akin to pouring petrol onto a lighted cigarette butt in The British Library. Only now, 30 years after Weekend World began, does there appear to be enough of a momentum within the broadcasting industry to begin to break down some of the taboos surrounding the presentation of politics on mainstream TV.

Is it too late? Revamping a long running television programme only works if done with plenty of confidence and panache, and if the point of the overhaul is immediately and overwhelmingly obvious to viewers. The worst thing that can happen is that On the Record is succeeded by a show that’s On the Record without the long interviews but still with the same somewhat remorseless tone and atmosphere. It will be forever ironic – and instructive – that at the end of the day the most lively and enjoyable aspect to On the Record was its avuncular title music and credit sequence. They really should’ve done more with the crocodile.

In the end it wasn’t anything particularly remarkable or extraordinary that lifted Celebrity Big Brother out of the humdrum; it was a handful of unexpectedly human and subdued scenes that slipped through and caught you unawares.

The turning point was a day or so after Goldie had left. His absence seemed to give the other contestants more room to explore and exploit their circumstances, and in turn become a bit more aware of the game they were playing. The marathon quilting session had already helped create a situation conducive to late night confessions and one on one revelations; now these became more commonplace, further encouraging a sense that at last we were watching something quirky and unusual rather than merely a joyless parade of comedy wigs.

And so at last the programme took on more of an identity, distinguishable from previous Big Brother efforts. Somewhere along the way it was almost as if everyone’s dogged insistence in adhering to a set of unspoken rules and conventions momentarily lapsed. Maybe it was the aftermath of the first eviction, arguably always something of a watershed moment, that did the trick and shook up everyone’s concentration. Certainly the fact it was Goldie who left played a major factor in tipping the course of events away from the precocious and contrived and towards one of an uneasy resolve. From that point on, the mood in the house became stoically chipper, where the desire to bottle everything up was always being overwhelmed by the need to be handwringingly tearful and honest. Out of that came the endless, earnest theorising and analysing from Les Dennis and Sue Perkins, laid on in full for us at home, flipping between the engrossing to the irritating and back again.

It was during the quilting task that we were also able to glimpse more of Anne Diamond’s personality, in particular her attitude towards herself and her very pronounced public reputation. To hear this high-profile figure with almost 20 years exposure in the national spotlight – plus an unending barrage of media criticism and sniping – speaking candidly about her campaign against cot deaths was a genuinely absorbing moment.

Was she aware of the cameras or not? Was it unprompted, or had she been waiting for the right time to raise the topic? Whatever, the fact her responses sounded utterly sincere and self-effacing found a resonance within the otherwise largely sterile feel to the show. From then onwards, Anne became easily the most interesting person in the house, and her eviction at such an early stage was a terrible shame. To have her lose out to Sue, who seemed to spend the majority of her time on screen exaggerating her sassy, neurotic wisecracking credentials, was even more of a disappointment. The following programmes became obsessed with Sue and her mounting dislike of Les, a trend that became rather tiresome, so that eventually you found your sympathies shifting over to Melinda Messenger and Mark Owen. After all, they knew when to shut up, seemed most sensitive to the group as a whole, and accordingly were able to win this viewer’s trust and respect.

But just as various commendable and exciting elements emerged over the course of Celebrity Big Brother‘s final days, so too did more irritations. The obsession with repeating both what we already knew and had already seen became more extreme than ever before. As such huge leaps had to be made whenever we returned to real time, often requiring Davina to sum up a more recent, unaired task and its consequences in three seconds. What we’d witnessed live the night before was fussily recapitulated the night after, and so on to the extent that out of an hour’s worth of nightly screen time only half really merited tuning in for. The result was a sprinkling of choice clips undermined by an overdose of tedium, and the amount of energy invested in going over old ground might have put off as many returning viewers as it did pull in new ones.

This feeling of watching a kind of aimless meander through bits of footage pulled in from all over the place was in stark contrast to the neat and effective reels of “best bits” assembled to pay homage to each latest evictee. Loads of stuff in these montages were from scenes and incidents never ever shown during the main programmes, and they often looked a hell of a lot more fun and intriguing. There were occasional chances to glimpse a bit of it during the shoestring Celebrity Big Brother’s Little Brother, the companion E4 show valiantly held together by Dermot O’Leary who deserves much better than interviewing dream experts. As it was it seemed to be the curse that the high points of the main C4 shows were always flashed past in seconds (riding mattresses down the stairs) while the worst dragged out for minute upon minute (Sue Perkins’ pontificating, Les Dennis’ moaning).

Overall, though, the thing that most saved Celebrity Big Brother from becoming quite the missed opportunity this reviewer so confidently predicted last Friday wasn’t any sudden change of mood or emphasis, or a switch in presentation by the programme makers, or even a toning down of some of the more obvious and predictable elements of the format. It was just that, at the end of the day, and maybe in spite of rather than because of the footage we were shown, those personalities playing the game found the means and recourse to deliver us a half dozen or so moments of truly compelling telly.

They were moments of substance and clarity that will stick in the memory a fair while; they added to our understanding of those people and their celebrity world instead of just confirming our own preconceptions and prejudices. Those scenes in question may have been brief, businesslike or even throwaway – but this just seemed to add to their punch and their power.

So something did come of the programme. Mark Owen climbing into the pool wearing a giant cow head, Les Dennis’ morbid anecdotes about outliving not just Dustin Gee but the duo’s entire coterie of supporting musicians and compères – here at last were the raw materials for those crucial morning after debates and conversations. There may only have been half a dozen moments, but that was enough; and besides, they were certainly half a dozen more than either Big Brother 2 and 3 could offer.

It’s unfortunate that the return of Celebrity Big Brother has coincided with the peak of this year’s obsession with unmasking personalities as “real people”. Whether by placing them in genuinely alien and hostile locations (I’m A Celebrity …) or, conversely, attempting to capture them in their own native environments (The Entertainers), the business of unravelling the enigmas in which contemporary celebrities wrap themselves has moved on from last time the doors of the Big Brother house were swung open. As such it’s almost not enough anymore to simply watch the great and the good fool around trying to bake bread or do their own laundry.

The weather’s not exactly on side either. There’s little that appeals less than drawing the curtains on a cold, rainy autumnal night, switching on the TV, and finding a group of people standing around peering through the curtains at a cold, rainy autumnal night. Placing the show in late November has meant the bulk of the action happens indoors with only rare forays outside to a setting where the image of folk doing nothing takes on a slightly more poetic and substantial aspect.

Indeed, so much of the coverage so far has been framed solely by the four-walled forensic-lab styled décor of the house as to render it painfully boring to look at. The experience is similar in some way to when the “divide” was installed during Big Brother 3 and the visual scope of the programme was immediately undermined. This time, however, the whole spectacle may as well have been sited within a large, isolated sound stage, given the pointlessness of rigging up multiple cameras round a garden where the only notable thing going to happen is that the vegetables die of ground frost.

When the line-up of personalities slated to participate in the first Celebrity Big Brother was revealed to the world, the rather tawdry standing of some of the distinctly non-credible names seemed at first to suggest that nothing but a desperate salute to yesteryear would be in order. In fact, mixing a former member of a boy band with an ex-breakfast television presenter, a glamour-chasing starlet, a TV funny man, a self-consciously stylish “street” icon plus, well, someone else proved to be dynamite. So why doesn’t it feel like it’s working this time round?

There’s a few things that seem to be at fault. Firstly, the nagging sense that everyone is just going through the motions, and of doing the bare minimum to ensure the finished product is recognisably the Big Brother “brand”. So we’ve the trademark cutaways to show someone sniggering while someone else is making an arse of themselves; sequences of personalities alone with their thoughts, like that’s supposed to mean something; plus the way the camera repeatedly and patronisingly picks on a couple of contestants (so far Anne Diamond and Les Dennis) and decides to dwell on them at length as if to prove something significant – i.e. oh, look at them, because they’re older than the rest of the group they must be having a bad time of it.

Underpinning Big Brother‘s veneer of the unrehearsed has always been the creaky monolith of the minutely pre-planned and contrived; but this used to be well disguised by the shock of the new and the innovative. The manner in which the camera and editing orchestrated tension during the early years of Big Brother was pioneering and exciting; now it’s just stale and ineffectual. The programme really needs to shake itself up every 12 months or so to stay fresh and relevant.

This ties in with another flaw: the way the show is choked up with so many rituals and conventions. For instance, where’s the logic that dictates Big Brother must now kick off with a jamboree of hysteria whipped up to accompany six people walking through a door? Nobody cares about watching the celebrities “entering” the house, certainly not enough to justify a whole hour’s television. We want to see them inside and staking out their turf. Yet this boring preamble, forever distinguished by Davina McCall’s inability to present live television out of doors, seems to have become an unnecessary staple element of the Big Brother package.

The idea of having “live” tasks has also been maintained, and once again screws up the show’s pace by turning proceedings into a sequence of sudden bursts of activity rather than a rolling exercise of mounting suspense. Seeing the nominations live remains a bit of a novelty, but this too was botched by the decision to tell the house the names of the potential evictees a matter of seconds later, denying us the chance to see how the contestants dealt with not knowing who was facing the chop. Meanwhile the fact that a big deal is still made about how the house has only got one hour of hot water a day is a joke; if it’s supposed to make us feel intimidated or impressed or awestruck, it just doesn’t register anymore. And enough with the blasted chickens, they were barely amusing three years ago.

Then there’s the celebrities themselves, whose participation has prompted Davina to indulge in more of her patented pointless “off the cuff” outbursts – such as this, just after the conclusion of the nominations on Friday night: “Actually, out of this group, they’re all brilliant, and it’s a shame that anyone has to go – but they do, that’s Big Brother!” Last year the stars seemed more than willing to make the show work for them, be it for some unsubtle career maintenance (Claire Sweeney), exorcising personal demons (Vanessa Feltz) or a superb game of double bluff (Jack Dee). This year, so far at any rate, no-one’s been bothered to attempt anything remotely similar. Nobody’s tried to hijack proceedings, no-one’s got on their soapbox, and worse of all, nobody’s talking back to Big Brother.

In fact, the nearest we’ve come to seeing any kind of life and energy in the house has been courtesy of Mark Owen. The first instance was during the opening night when, on the receipt of some written instructions, he quipped he couldn’t read; secondly, and best of all, was during the live nominations when he quizzed Big Brother over whether his nominations were, in their eyes, suitable. His actions suddenly threw the spotlight onto the production team, who twice were accidentally heard frantically trying to cope with their subject shifting the viewer’s attention away from himself and onto the programme’s mechanics. It was good stuff.

Perhaps the most nagging aspect, though, is the Big Brother‘s context. Right from the start there’s always been a necessary trade-off between artifice and spontaneity, which if done with enough panache the viewer can acknowledge as well as enjoy and join in with. Disrupt that trade-off and things go all awry. Shorn of the overarching spectacle of Comic Relief, which was of course the whole point of the first Celebrity Big Brother and which helped turned it into a national event, there’s too much room this time round to speculate over motive and machinations.

The money from our telephone calls is going to a range of charities but these are rarely mentioned and when they are their names blur into one another. Worse, because the “winner” doesn’t win anything other than the title “Celebrity Big Brother Winner”, it doesn’t feel like the show’s building towards any single definable moment of closure, or a point where the entire effort immediately becomes justified and the viewer gets some payback for all the time (and money) they’ve invested. All that’ll happen is another celebrity will clatter down the ridiculously overlong metal staircase and that will be that.

Hopefully all of this will be proved wrong. Hopefully something absolutely extraordinary will happen between now and next Friday that will turn Celebrity Big Brother into a defining moment of TV in 2002. On present form, however, the entire cavalcade seems set to be remembered only for being another missed opportunity to exploit the notion of having half a dozen famous people locked up in one place and their every move captured on tape. The fact footage was included of Anne Diamond extolling the house for being, of all things, a “holiday camp”, reveals how far the format has come from its humble origins. If that’s how it’s to be from now on then you might as well toss Alan Whicker in as nose-rubbing narrator and be done with it.

Now in episode three of a five part series, Jamie’s Kitchen is turning out to be a very different animal than first expected.

I would imagine that for most people their initial impression of a series called Jamie’s Kitchen would be yet another cookery programme in the Naked Chef vein, with Jamie Oliver becoming even more hideously over-exposed than he already is.

But of course that is not what this project is about. Jamie Oliver is, for whatever reason, opening a new restaurant in London, the kitchen of which will be staffed by 15 “unemployed, and under-priviledged” young people who will complete several years worth of culinary training in under a year. And this programme is focusing mainly on the fortunes of the trainees.

Although in the background there are vague hints that the redevelopment costs for the restaurant are spiralling out of control, and Jamie’s home and office are on the line now (in true Channel 4 property programme style) we see very little of this aspect of the development. Similarly although we are aware of his home situation, with the recent birth of his daughter, and obvious strain on his relationship with his wife, there are only snippets of these difficulties, intended to highlight his commitment to the project on a very personal level.

So the majority of our time is spent with the trainees from initial interview, through selection, and now into training. But this programme manages to confound, and in the end I am not sure how enjoyable I find the viewing.

At the crudest level, particularly at the start, you could summarise this as Fame Academy meets Pop Idol meets catering college (even down to separating the hopeful into different rooms before telling them who had “won” a place on the course). Yet, for me, the worrying aspect of this was that this was more about reality than a bunch of kids with ambitions to be famous. These were a bunch of young unemployed people, many of whom have had significant difficulties through school, for various reasons. And this unease has grown with every episode, as we become more aware of what this means for the trainees.

Both this week, and last to some extent, has focused on getting the trainees through their NVQ Level 1, the most basic qualification they need to achieve before progressing. What appeared to shock everybody involved was the significant truancy levels with some trainees barely turning up half the time. At times this made very uncomfortable viewing as this group of middle-class people verged into “how could they do this to us after all we’ve done for them” territory.

I feel that the programme significantly fails to portray this in a balanced way, and ends up almost sanctifying these wonderful people who are putting so much into the project, only for these ungrateful people not to turn up. Thus we had footage of Jamie in the kitchens at 2am with the bakery shift, and hints of just how pleased his wife is with this, counteracted by the voice-over tellling us how one of the most persistent non-attenders has not bothered to turn up for any shifts at all.

There is no exploration of any of the difficulties these people might have in taking this chance that has been offered to them – I don’t profess to understand, but neither is this programme helping me to do that. Only once, in last week’s episode, did we get any hint of how important this was to one of the young men who was displaying some behavioural problems. After telling the camera about his record 126 exclusions from school without being expelled, he was asked what failing this course would mean to him. He replied that he “I’d think that I’m shit”. This feels like a last chance for this young man to feel that he is good at something and can maybe achieve something in his life.

Newspaper reviews have commented how Jamie missed his Social Work calling, as he connects with these young people and tries to support them through this, and to his credit, none of them have totally dropped out, he has managed to get the suspended young man back on the course, and most of them have passed their NVQ Level 1 – just.

I probably will keep watching, if nothing else, because I would like it to succeed. If it does, this will be, for me, a genuinely feel-good programme. But if the project fails, Jamie’s Kitchen could leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Neither Phoenix Nights, nor The League of Gentlemen has succeeded in scaling the comedic heights of earlier series. The latter, in particular, has diminished thanks to its transition from quasi-sketch show to quasi-horror. Perhaps any thoughts to let the grotesque caricatures of Royston Vasey have “more space to breathe” should have been suffocated at birth. In addition, both The League of Gentlemen and Phoenix Nights appear to suffer from too much affection on the part of the series’ writers.

Meanwhile, The Office has returned to a level of acclaim that has continued to bemuse this reviewer. David Brent is – in many ways – an indication of how little comedy has changed since the last series of I’m Alan Partridge. Inadequate men striving to create a false impression of their own importance was funny back in the days of Knowing Me, Knowing You, and still seems to be funny now. Gervais’ trick is simply to heighten the realism of the production, reduce the grotesqueness of the central character and allow the overall product to strike deeper chords of recognition within the audience as a result.

Viewed in an utterly contemporary context, the new series of I’m Alan Partridge looks curiously dated. Recording it on video and including an audience laughter track flies in the face of recent comedy tradition. The genre of the docu-soap (whose artifices form the basis for much of The Office‘s believability) was not so prevalent back in 1997. In this sense, Alan’s return is reminiscent of Björn Borg’s short-lived tennis comeback, in which the Swede insisted upon using his trusty old wooden racket, whilst all of his competitors had long since graduated to graphite.

Unlike Borg though, Alan looks in with a shout of being able to fend off the opposition. The series’ first episode, although somewhat disjointed, included enough good material to compensate for some of the new series’ situational weaknesses. In particular Alan’s exchanges with rival DJ Dave Clifton are just as hilarious and competitive as ever they were.

What’s still no good however (and might even be getting worse) is Felicity Montagu’s performance as Alan’s harassed PA Lynne. Whilst attempting to portray her as extreme a personality as Alan, Montagu brings little variation or depth to her role. Unfortunately, the signs are that such shallow characterisation is to be found elsewhere in this new series. The inclusion of a secondary character in a sitcom who just happens to be foreign, is almost always bad news, and Alan’s girl-friend (played by Amelia Bullmore) has done little yet to disperse these doubts, drawing upon the much mined seam of cultural misunderstandings as a source of comedy.

That said, I’m Alan Partridge is not yet a moribund vehicle. Making much of the introduction of new catchphrases (“cash back” and “back of the net”), the humour is in truth much the same; but thankfully the jokes are all new. So all hail the return of Alan. The only place that you’ll hear the phrase “not literally – that would be hideous” this year is in The Office.

In fact we saw the effects some years ago when Paul Merton took a series off to get his head sorted out, to be replaced by Eddie Izzard and Clive Anderson amongst others. Funny men in their own right, but without the specific wit and knowledge of the news displayed by Merton. Izzard was particularly numbing as he frustratingly offered “jam” as the answer for everything. And since the show has only recently become a cornerstone of the BBC1 schedule any change would no doubt affect its ability to entertain.

Merton tried his best last week under extreme pressure (no time to prepare, Deayton’s chair still warm). In a familiar studio but forced to put on his Room 101 style presenter hat, he was by turns squinty and nervous. The writing was probably as good as usual, but the script filled with the nuances of Deayton’s speech patterns lay there coming from his lips. During the missing words round he suddenly became Roy Walker on Catchphrase telling the guests that their joke answers were good but not correct. Now and then he seemed to glance over at Ross Noble, borrowing his seat for a week wondering if he would ever be back there.

Tonight he was much more comfortable as team captain again, as the second guest presenter in as many weeks Anne Robinson took charge. She had been one of the names that had been mooted by bookies as a possible permanent replacement along with John Sargeant and Chris Moyles. As is usual when such lists appear, none of possibles fitted the bill, the closest being Stephen Fry, although his showing during a special episode as part of last year’s Comic Relief didn’t inspire confidence. Of the rest, Robinson seemed an odd choice and so it proved during the show.

Things didn’t begin well. In a move which was supposed to provide context but in fact gave little cause for confidence, Robinson advised she “hadn’t watched the show since 1995″ (and she was going to present the thing?) and a clip of an old episode was presented as the reason why. Merton was off on one of his old tirades, this time about Anne Robinson’s wink as presenter of Points of View. It was a classic piece of nostalgia from when the show was arguably at the height of its powers, the late Paula Yates the guest, that very episode being the one in which she called Ian Hislop the “sperm of the devil”. For a moment some viewers might have hoped that this episode was going to get a repeat showing. No such luck. We were cruelly brought back to the present as Robinson stumbled through some japery about giving Hislop some extra points up front for Paul’s cheek. Merton tried his best to milk the moment but it didn’t really work.

The sinking feeling continued as Robinson stumbled through the introductions of the guests, John O’Farrell and John Simpson. These are hardly ever the best jokes of the show. Last week Merton didn’t even try. Here it wasn’t clear when O’Farrell’s introduction had ended – pregnant pause then laughter. This was something that continued throughout the show. The audience often seemed to wait for Robinson to get the line out, so that they could work out how Deayton would have said it then laughed. In many ways this isn’t Robinson’s fault. She isn’t a comedienne and is more used to the ad-libs which are written for her on The Weakest Link. But often after shows, Deayton was allowed to re-film his fluffed lines (seen on some of the series videos). This privilege didn’t appear to be available to Robinson which lessened her impression overall.

Luckily Hislop and Merton were largely on form in their savaging of the host. Hislop in particular was keen to turncoat her by bringing up her time on The Mirror under Robert Maxwell. Robinson squirmed uncomfortably after the reminder, and there was some sport as she turned against the Private Eye editor, who was relishing the chance to trot out his old (admittedly funny) Maxwell jokes. Oddly (in this edit) Merton’s last infamous television meeting with the former Watchdog presenter on Room 101 didn’t warrant a mention, although he did get one of the best lines. At a moment when the show was flagging Merton shouted “Bank!” crippling the audience. When told by Anne that she was pleased that he watched The Weakest Link Paul explained that he “only ever saw the last five minutes because The Simpsons was on after it.” Even the host smiled at that one. For a moment there was chemistry and spirit amongst the group.

The one thing Deayton was good at was shutting up at the right moments and letting the team captains speak. Presumably used to lengthy recording blocks when you can’t fall behind, Anne must have assumed she had to get the entire show recorded in half an hour and kept talking over the guests and captains. At one point she told an indignant Hislop to shut up so that she could say something. As his forehead furrowed he must have wondered whose show it was. Since the programme had become the story the guests felt slightly beside the point. John Simpson was like a walking (or seated) re-run of his past appearances, so we got to hear again about the interview with Gaddafi in which the Colonel farted constantly. It’s a surprise his rainforest psychedelic drug experiences didn’t put in an appearance, but that may have been in poor taste. But he was up to the challenge when Robinson tried to make something of his proclamation that he had liberated Kabul. Simpson told Robinson: “Do you know the burkha covers your entire face? Perhaps you might like to try one.”

Filling the role of the guest no one outside Whitehall had heard of was John O’Farrell who offered a couple of good one-liners but failed to make an impression because he became Robinson’s whipping boy. At times she seemed to be victimizing him as though he was a guest on The Weakest Link. There the host has a habit of constantly referring back to the one thing she knows about a contestant and here it was again – his failure in an election. It hadn’t been all that funny in her introduction, but it came back up time and again.

And so half an hour passed. On the evidence of tonight’s performance Robinson won’t be the permanent presenter of Have I Got News For You, but the experiment will have helped Hat Trick and BBC bosses to decide what they won’t want from a new host. While it’s difficult to see Deayton being invited back next series, it’s equally hard to see the show’s continuation without him, despite the best efforts of Merton and Hislop. The last name to be mooted was Johnny Vaughn. Personally I would prefer Johnny Vegas. He couldn’t be any worse than Anne Robinson was tonight.