Radio Times

Forget the historic US election and the ever crunchier credit crunch. Forget, if you will, the Ross/Brand furore and Laura White being booted out of The X Factor. What everyone's talking about is this: how come John Sergeant's still in Strictly Come Dancing?

Admit it. When the series started, you thought he'd be the first to go, didn't you? I certainly did. Poor John, I thought, as I scanned the list of would-be twinkle-toed stars. Who's going to vote for a chubby, retired political correspondent when there are all those muscly sportsmen, hunky actors and long-limbed...

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Watching Paul Merton kick a man in the groin, combining the swift upstroke of a goose-stepping Basil Fawlty with the sort of profuse apologies offered by his wife Sybil, brought tears to my eyes. Of laughter.

What it did to the poor chap on the receiving end, goodness knows. Apart from confirm his near lunatic commitment to getting into the Guinness Book of Records by any means possible (and as the reigning holder of the "most kicks to the groin" record, clearly any means are acceptable these days to the record breakers' bible).

Merton is...

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These days it's become par for the course for cultural commentators to get themselves into frightful strops about TV producers "dumbing down" their output and resorting to pumping out lowbrow dreck in order to claw in viewing figures. A good example of this phenomenon was the BBC's decision at the end of 2007 to reduce its in-house factual programme budgets - a move that went down like the proverbial lead balloon and had many broadsheet writers spluttering into their peppermint tea.

But the situation's not quite as bad as all that. True, programmes like BBC3's Me and My...

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It's said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if that's the case then the makers of The Apprentice have some very genuine fans in the people behind ITV1's Natural Born Sellers. To call Natural Born Sellers a cheap knock-off would be accurate, but it would also be doing the show an injustice. See, while The Apprentice has a bigger budget, better production values and Nick and Margaret, Natural Born Sellers has something extra: heart.

Initially, I wasn't too hopeful. Gone is the lavish pseudo-film stock of the Beeb's version. Gone is the fancy...

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Big books, big budgets, big productions. Adaptations of classic novels are probably better placed than any other type of screen drama to succeed, and in the months leading up to Christmas, there are always a couple nestling in the schedules.

This is because the English autumn, with its ancient and peculiar festivals, darkening evenings and foreboding skies is the perfect season for indulging in a bit of heavyweight literary escapism - ever so slightly lightened, of course, by the skilful cutting and trimming that takes 1,000 pages from print to screen.

These epic dramas are tautly...

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Nice cup of tea? Hot buttered crumpet? Antiques Roadshow? Mmmm…don't mind if I do.

Yes, Antiques Roadshow is the epitome of Sunday-night cosiness. A toasty duvet of a television programme to wrap round yourself as the evenings draw in.

So why is the latest series being heralded by a TV trailer featuring sports cars and explosions, along with the implication that slinky new presenter Fiona Bruce is here to "sex up" the programme? What next, a breakbeat version of the theme tune?

I don't want Antiques Roadshow sexed up! I can't think of anything more inappropriate...

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"A sitcom," Chris Morris once said, "isn't usually the right tool for satire." Fair point, perhaps; after all, a show like My Family is about as sharp as a bag of marshmallows. But in the case of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's Yes Minister, we're dealing with a definite exception to that rule.

Yes Minister is not only a delight to watch but also a sharply observed, engaging and utterly iconoclastic look at the British political system. Instead of caricaturing the preposterous posturing that we're all privy to in the House of Commons, Yes Minister takes us behind...

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I have to start by making a confession. I wasn't exactly chuffed when the news broke that Catherine Tate was to play the Doctor's new companion. Yes, I admit it, I joined countless other fans in a chorus of "What is Russell T Davies thinking?" I'd been unfortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Tate's comedy sketch show, and I couldn't see anything remotely funny about it. In Christmas special The Runaway Bride, I found her character, Donna Noble, brash, mouthy and annoying.

But as series four of Doctor Who progresses, I'm getting fat on...

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Whenever Sex and the City comes under attack for being silly and shallow, there's a female columnist ready to leap to its defence and list its feminist credentials. But the whole point of SATC is its shameless fascination with the things that make so many women tick - fashion, relationships and gossip - delivered with brilliant comic irony. SATC fans don't need a lecture in female morality and the evils of consumerism. Virtually every joke in the show points up the absurdity of lusting after designer shoes or dating totally inappropriate men. But in doing...

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You've heard of Wags. Now meet the Bags. The Beauties and Geeks in this show are a curious species who coexist in an alternate CCTV-laden universe to compete for a pot of dollars.

Each intellectually challenged beauty is paired with a gormless geek to complete weekly tasks that play to each other's strengths and weaknesses. One couple is turfed out of the house each week; one duo wins at the end.

Sounds simple enough. But if the assembled Bags were on an Everest climb to improvement they would be at least five weeks away from base...

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Ever since Changing Rooms offered neighbours the chance to assault each other's houses with the help of gaudy interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, there has been a seemingly limitless demand for property-related reality shows. Our TV schedules are congested with copycat programmes on everything connected to the humble home. If property was really that exciting we'd all be estate agents. So why do we love them so?

Well, voyeurism is the obvious answer. That old parental caution "don't talk to strangers" seems to be part of our national psyche in adulthood. Thus our natural curiosity for seeing...

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Every week it happens. I get lulled into a false sense of security by the mind-bogglingly simple opening round, you see. Then along comes "Information Overload". I concentrate hard on my TV screen as my senses are assaulted with conflicting aural and visual stimuli, unlike anything outside of maybe an acid trip.

Now for the test: "What colour was the ice-cream cone that appeared when the newsreader was talking?" asks the chap in the suit that's working really well with his broad shoulders and chiselled jaw.

"Red," I say, confidently, to the television.

"Red?" guesses...

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It turns out you should never judge a sitcom by its impossibly dull sit. Try not to nod off when I tell you that BBC3's Pulling is about three attractive but flawed metropolitan women who live together and make bad romantic decisions. That'll be Friends without men, then. Or a Sex and the City-inspired, aspirational romp. Roll on the unreasonably muscular conquests, sex talk and shoes that cost more than most people's houses.

Or not.

In fact there are plagues more appealing than the lifestyle and personalities touted by the daringly rank Pulling. There's no diddling...

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Anyone remember The Great Egg Race? A quaint, scientific challenge-based show from the early 1980s, it required its contestants to solve such delicate problems as taking a photograph of an oil rig from a fluttering kite.

But that kind of thing looks distinctly unimpressive in 21st-century television schedules. The ante has to be upped to include steel girders, welding and combustible materials - and Scrapheap Challenge does exactly this, with panache, gusto and the occasional explosion. It's now in its umpteenth series, presented by actor Robert Llewellyn (best known for playing the mechanoid Kryten in...

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