Radio Times

A visitor to the UK who finds himself bored senseless in a hotel room on a weekday afternoon - and let's face it, it can happen - might well turn on the TV and be confronted by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. He might well be unmoved by the strangely mismatched couple sitting awkwardly on a sofa. He may even, heaven forbid, think about changing channels.

But he won't have an inkling of the extraordinary affection that Richard and Judy inspire in British television viewers. The intro sequence to the current Channel 4 series shows a...

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Put simply, Cash in the Attic makes me want to go into the attic and find something of worth that I can then swap for loads of lovely cash. This is despite the fact that I don't have an attic. Or anything of worth.

So why does CITA inspire such devotion in me? I have a kitchen, but I don't get upset if I miss an episode of MasterChef. And why does CITA stand head and shoulders above the glut of other antiques shows - of which there are now so many and all so similar that...

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Crackly, 1950s archive footage of a ten-year-old girl intently writing a letter. A voiceover by a real ten-year-old: "Dear Grandma. Your breast-enhancement surgery looks beautiful. I only wish you were alive to see it. We could barely close the lid of your coffin…"

Welcome to the deeply wrong world of Wonder Showzen. This American cult hit, which pops up randomly late at night on MTV Two, is the best comedy you've never seen. Even in the States, where MTV Two also aired it in 2005-6, it only attracted 140,000 viewers – although that probably saved it from...

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They call it "the Olympics of the dog world" but Crufts is far more important than that. At 117 years old (that's 819 in dog years), it's a whole five years older than Baron de Coubertin's glorified sports day, and while it's called a sporting event, it's really more of a hybrid (never a mongrel, mind) of high-level sports event, beauty pageant and Fame Academy.

For a start, the sheer scale of it is dazzling. Try to imagine over 20,000 pooches from 182 different breeds, all in one place. That's a lot of jumping over little plastic...

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If I wanted to sue my pet, hug an inflatable lawyer or observe sexual misconduct in the workplace, I'd head to the Massachusetts offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt, attorneys-at-law.

Boston Legal - a spin-off of The Practice - is an undervalued, merrily peculiar legal drama on Living. It's frothy, flippant and funny in ways that are difficult to illustrate without clips, or at least a finely crocheted pair of William Shatner and James Spader hand-puppets.

Shatner and Spader play lawyers Denny Crane (a trigger-happy Republican who likes to say his own name) and Alan...

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According to the research oracle BARB just over 1.4 million viewers tuned in to BBC4 for an average of nine minutes last week. This amounts to a massive 0.5% audience share. Not a statistic to be proud of, to be sure; but the sad truth of the matter is that the rest of you really don't know what you're missing.

BBC4 is television for grown-ups. By opening its doors at 7pm it has the good grace not to indulge in the mindless pap that habitually pads out the daytime schedules. Rather than the relentless pursuit of ratings it...

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No football tournament is more entertaining than the Africa Cup of Nations. It's got all the swagger, recklessness and naivety that was squeezed out of our game about the time goalkeepers stopped wearing roll-neck, woollen sweaters.

In the wide-open spaces of the African tournament, players have the freedom to express themselves and ball skills flourish. It makes you want to eavesdrop on the coaches' final instructions as teams take the field. You can just hear them saying "Have fun, guys" or possibly "We've got the juju over this lot," but never, "Remember, lads, keep your shape".

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It's the show that takes Walking with Dinosaurs to its very extremes. There's no denying we're fascinated by the beasts that roamed Earth millions of years in the past. So as well as being rip-roaring entertainment, Primeval also challenges some dino-related preconceptions.

Chief among these must surely be the much-vaunted belief that the creatures were wiped out by some kind of natural disaster. Instead, it seems far more likely Professor Cutter and his pals are to blame for decimating the dinosaur population. To date, they have variously shot at, harpooned, machine-gunned and run down with a...

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In shows like Property Ladder, enthusiastic amateurs with no experience buy a house, knock a wall through and do up the bathroom in the hope of turning a quick buck. In contrast, Grand Designs follows projects that begin life as muddy plots, or involve reconstruction beyond the realms of mere "renovation". They're the brainchildren of people with know-how and skill, or those pursuing such a unique and original passion that they have to invent cutting-edge technologies or revive lost skills to make it a reality.

Grand Designs is also an example of great storytelling. But it...

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Mornings are for cricket, afternoons are for football, but late, drunken, solitary, post-pub nights in well-loved armchairs are for snooker. The exquisite serenity. The leisurely strolls around the table. The referee's immaculate white gloves polishing balls to a gleaming iridescence. The tranquil, understated commentary by Clive Everton or Dennis Taylor. "The table is playing well this evening, Clive." "Yes, it's a responsive cloth." Of course it is. It's a highly responsive cloth. But above all, the attraction has to be…well, it's the trigonometry.

Look, maybe it's a bloke thing. After a few beers in the pub, the...

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No guns, no car chases, no rushing to hospital. Part of Cranford's appeal is that it's different to every other drama, but I'm stuck to it like glue because it's alive. Vivid characters trying to be all English and polite while their fists are clenching from rage. Every nod of the head is perfectly correct etiquette but every eye is envious, plotting, snide.

It's the story of one year in a Cheshire market town of the 1840s - and it looks like every town in every BBC costume drama, chiefly because it is. Filmed in Lacock, Wiltshire, it's...

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I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has got a lot to answer for. For starters, I now haven't been to the pub for 16 nights. And in the absence of your regular correspondent Grace Dent, I thought you would like to know why men like me are tuning in night after night for more bickering, sniping and subtropical subplots.

Firstly, I'm a Celeb… is that rarest of things - an ITV programme packed with tiny pleasures. And I'm not simply talking about Ant and Dec.

The cheeky Geordie funsters have, as always, been baiting of the...

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The news isn't funny, is it? Not with Iraq festering away? Not with the renaissance of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, the world's least comedic double act? Not with California in cinders? Oh, yes, it is. The news is funny, very funny indeed and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is there to prove it.

Often to be found on More4, The Daily Show is America's funny bone and conscience rolled into one laugh-out-loud, but thought-provoking, whole. The format is simple and recognisable to anyone familiar with Newsnight: a loquacious but authoritative host, a selection of overearnest correspondents...

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Weary of Strictly Come Dancing's waltz, or Paul O'Grady's schmaltz? John Torode skewering a MasterChef student isn't your scene? OK, you get the idea. If you come home exhausted from work and can't face hard news, soft soap, or your kids bingeing on Tracy Beaker re-runs, there is an alternative. Bubbling away in the stranded backwaters of the early-evening Freeview schedules is Takeshi's Castle, a game show of two halves with numerous guilty pleasures.

Japan has long excelled at this kind of shiny, disposable programming - Clive James frequently showed extracts of Japanese game-show contestants enthusiastically...

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