In Who Do You Think You Were, firefighter Neil Clarke discovers that in a past life he was a land-owning, murdering widower – or was he?

Trevor Roberts is "a hypnotist with a speciality in past life regression" according to the careful voiceover by film-maker Pinny Grylls for her documentary Who Do You Think You Were. Indeed. By their overly white, overly pressed shirts, soothing tones and indefinable air of creepiness shall ye know them.

Neil Clarke, a 32-year-old firefighter from Stoke-on-Trent, volunteered to undergo past life regression to see who he had been in a previous incarnation. Traditionally, of course, it's Marie Antoinette, who must have had souls rattling round in her like distressed aristocrats in a tumbrel. Clarke rang the changes by recovering memories of being a 19th-century Glossop landowner called Peter John Hawksworth, who lost his wife then his money and then murdered one of his debt collectors.

"What are you taking from this life?" asked Trevor (soothingly) at the end of their session. "Heartache," Clarke replied.

Unsettled by but also convinced of the truth of his experience, Clarke set out – with the help of his wife, the internet, a genealogist called Dee and his father Phil – to see if a formerly land-owning, widowed murderer by that name had ever existed in the wilds of Gloucestershire.

It transpired that he had not. But what also transpired was that Clarke's mother had died when he was 16. Father and son had barely talked about it since. Evidently, what we take from a lot of lives is heartache.

This was a revelation that came too late to be fully explored, which made the programme feel oddly weighted. The mysteries of the myriad ways in which the mind will try to cope with unresolved traumas, the need we have for constructing narratives to help us make sense of our lives, were evoked but not delved into. Unlike most documentaries dealing with such subjects, though, Grylls mercifully resisted the temptation to leave us with an ending that suggested "maybe there's something in it after all!"

"That's a big pile of shit," said Clarke as he skirted a field. "It's a metaphor for this documentary!" But it wasn't, at all.

• Television
• Television industry

Lucy Mangan
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As a snapshot of 1984, Real Crime was great – but its supposed revelations were hardly new

There was something defiantly old-school about Real Crime: Yvonne Fletcher (ITV1): the unnecessary reconstruction featuring an Yvonne Fletcher lookalike who didn't look anything like Yvonne Fletcher; the newsreel footage of the British ambassador's wife singing the national anthem at Tripoli airport; Leon Brittan looking and sounding every bit as smarmy now as he did when he was home secretary in 1984.

As a recreation of a time when Libya was considered a major threat, Real Crime worked well. But it wasn't a period pastiche; it was a documentary about the shooting of Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy while policing an anti-Gaddafi demonstration. And here it rather came apart, not so much in the retelling of the events leading up to her death and its aftermath, as in presenter Mark Austin's insistence that it was telling us something new.

According to Austin, the existence of a secret document that says two Libyan embassy workers, Muhammad Matuq and Abdulgader Baghdadi, could be prosecuted for conspiracy to murder is a major new development. Not to the rest of us, it isn't. Within days of the subsequent embassy siege ending with all Libyan personnel being granted safe passage back to Tripoli, it was an open secret that Matuq and Baghdadi were the most likely suspects.

It was also an open secret there was absolutely no chance of either man ever being tried as they both had close links to Gaddafi, and the UK government was never going to rock the boat. The best Fletcher's family were ever going to get was the £250,000 blood money the Libyan government handed over as a tacit admission of guilt.

I can understand the frustration of Fletcher's family and friends, given that her alleged killers now have top jobs in the Libyan government; but including personal pieces to camera from former colleagues ("She has been denied justice") and an SAS man ("We should have gone in there and killed the lot of them") is neither enlightening nor helpful. If the programme really wanted to explain the reasons for the absence of a trial, it could have gone a great deal deeper into the complex diplomatic and trade links between Libya and the UK; and to mention the Lockerbie bombing without adding that there are strong doubts about Libya and Megrahi's involvement was a serious miss. Still, I guess that doesn't count as Real Crime.

Meanwhile, Dr Alice Roberts was continuing to do her bit for making archaeology sexy in Digging for Britain (BBC2). And very good she is at it, too. Here she revealed rather more about the dark ages than Mark Austin managed to about an event that happened 1,600 years later: how Britain was a multicultural nation centuries before anyone had invented the word; how, far from being merely a bloodthirsty mob of shaggers and killers, the Anglo-Saxons looked after disabled members of their society; how you can't necessarily trust theologians, such as the Venerable Bede, to give you an unbiased view of a society's history. It always helps to have a presenter – unlike Austin – who knows precisely where the bodies are buried.

New comedy quiz shows always make me nervous. Principally because they are rarely funny. Or a quiz, for that matter. The King is Dead (BBC3) didn't let me down. Here's the deal. Each week Simon Bird, Nick Mohammed and Katy Wix – all of whom have previously been known to be funny – pretend that someone important has died and interview minor celebs for the job vacancy. For this opening show, it was the president of the US, and in the running were Sarah Beeny – who spent the whole show looking like she wanted to kill her agent for putting her up for it, James Corden, who would turn up for anything providing there was a camera running, and Peaches Geldof. Yup, Peaches Geldof. If she's a guest on your first show, you know the game is up.

If there were any moments of comedy, I managed to miss them. I could say it was a show aimed at 14-year-old boys. But my 14-year-old son came in and watched with me for 10 minutes before saying: "Jesus, Dad. You don't half have to watch some shite."

• Television

John Crace
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Worried about being stuck on the Eiger? Well, don't worry, there's an escape hatch

I love a good mountain, and a good mountain tale. So I was pretty much won over as soon as I saw the title of Eiger: Wall of Death (BBC4). Mountains don't get much better than the Eiger with its legendary north face, a near vertical mile of rock and ice, haunted by savage winds and the ghosts of dead climbers. "Every ledge of the Eiger is covered in the sediment of history," says the mountaineer Stephen Venables, who is unusually forthcoming for a climber and has a lovely way with words. He was good on the the BBC's live rock climb in the Outer Hebrides last weekend (five hours of nail-biting drama).

More than 60 people have died attempting the Eiger's north face. Most agonising was the death of the German Toni Kurz in 1936. Kurz had already seen his three companions perish around him: he'd had to cut them free to try to get himself down alive. When he was within a few feet of a rescue party, all he had to do was detach himself from the rope and he would have fallen to them and been saved. But after a night dangling alone on the rock, he was too exhausted and frostbitten to summon up the energy. "I can't go on," he gasped, and died.

His would-be rescuers had emerged on to the wall from a door called the Stollenloch, which connects to the railway inside the mountain. That door is an extraordinary thing: it turns the north face of the Eiger into an advent calendar – albeit a one-hit one. To the climbers who have used the Stollenloch as an escape route, it must have felt like Christmas Day. There can be few doors – the one on the wardrobe on the way to Narnia perhaps, and possibly the Pearly Gates – that are so different on either side. On one side is one of the most extreme and terrifying places on earth, once described by the aristocratic British editor of the Alpine Journal as "an obsession for the mentally deranged" and "the most imbecile variant since mountaineering first began"; and on the other side are trainloads of tourists, on their way to see the view.

Today, mountain guides Kenton Cool and Neil Brodie are going the other way, from inside to out, just to have a look. "Bugger me, this is awesome," says one of them. See what I mean about not all climbers having Stephen Venables's way with words? The only pity about this absorbing chronicle of one of the world's great climbing challenges is that the conditions aren't right for Cool and Brodie. It would have been nice to go up with them, battling through the spindrift and the sediment of history, past the Stollenloch, the Hinterstoisser Traverse, the Flatiron, Death Bivouac, the Traverse of the Gods, the White Spider, and on to the summit. But then perhaps, in these days, when a Swiss wunderkind called Ueli Steck can scale the north face on his own in two hours and 47 minutes, it's quite reassuring that the mountain can still sometimes win.

I might add the gates of Waterloo Road (BBC1) to my list of doors that are very different on either side. But this time it's the opposite of the Stollenloch: calmness and normality outside, chaos and terror within. There's a new head teacher, Karen Fisher, played by Amanda Burton. And Mrs Fisher has got some serious demons of her own to deal with, personal ones, as well as the little devils at school.

Things kick off the night before school starts, when her teenage daughter Jess hops into bed with her deputy, Mr Mead. Not that he knew at the time she was the new head's daughter, and a pupil at the school where he works, but it's not long before he finds out. Then, on the first day of school, there's a road rage incident at the gate, an altercation with a couple of parents, a smoke bomb, an asthma attack, a fight, and a suspension. Then one of the new pupils, a 13-year-old girl, runs away and goes missing on the moors, as night falls and the weather closes in.

A pretty average day at Waterloo Road then, and fairly representative of what's just about to happen up and down the country – the only difference between a new term at a real school and a new term at Waterloo Road is that the latter is something to look forward to.

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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The Bill should have one more investigation – into their own murder, by axe, from above

Have you been watching … The Deep

So farewell then, The Bill (ITV). Sergeant Stone finally proves himself, Jasmine finally sings, the gang goes down. And DCI Jack Meadows holds forth on the the subject of respect. Somewhere along the line, someone changed the meaning of the word. You earn respect now through power, fear, money, the blade of a knife. How did that happen? Respect should be what his officers deserve: for having guns pointed at their heads by teenage thugs, then turning up to work the following morning at 7am sharp. Jack is proud of his team, and of the job they do every day. "It's an honour."

And it's been an honour to be part of it, Jack. Sir. He's talking to the team, and to the press, after the successful culmination of the Liam Martin murder case, and the subsequent rape of Jasmine Harris. Maybe he's also talking to the ITV top brass, after their decision to axe his show. Where's the respect there?

Perhaps there should have been one further case, an investigation into their own murder, by axe, from above. Smithy and Stone, using their newly discovered cooperativeness, could maybe interview ITV drama boss Laura Mackie, giving it the old good-cop-bad-cop routine (Stone would obviously be the bad cop). DC Grace Dasari could do some of the cleverer stuff, profiling etc. She could look back over the show's 27-year history, investigate how tastes have changed over time, try to figure out why revamps and slot switches have failed to halt a slide in ratings.

Crime scene examiner Eddie Olosunje could do the forensic stuff, show how we've moved on from bobbies on the beat to science and CSI. Perhaps DCI Meadows himself could call the top man, ITV boss Adam Crozier, into the station for questioning, try to trick a confession out of him like he does with gang member Gary Wilson. And maybe Crozier would simply turn Meadows's own words back on him: "We've all got it coming, son. Today it's your turn." Except of course no one would never call Meadows "son".

It is his turn though; it's all of their turns - maybe that's what their own investigation would conclude. The Bill may never have been groundbreaking, but it has often been relevant, and always a reliable presence, something not too demanding to fall back on, comforting even. But the time has come for the sun to set on Sun Hill for ever. It's nicely done, the very end. There's no big terrorism event that blows the station to oblivion. Another day shift simply comes to a close; it's raining, some of them are off to the pub: the message being that the job goes on, even if no one's watching any more. Respect.

Minnie Driver – or Minisub Driver as we may now have to call her – is back from The Deep (BBC1), saved by following a posse of beluga whales to a hole in the ice-cap. Carelessly, though, she's left behind several of the people she went down there with, including Jimmy Nesbitt. But she has gained Orla Brady. So little Scarlet back home in Ireland loses a daddy, but gets her mummy back, literally out of the blue. Even stevens then.

More crucially, Goran Visnjic off ER has saved a sample of the lava bug. And that means, with a bit of nanopore technology (I think) and some genome sequencing, that everything is going to be all right after all. What does Minnie think of that? "We're going to get another boat!" she gasps, in big Goran's arms. Oh, Christ no, does that mean we're going to get another series of this preposterous tosh? I don't think I could take that. I liked the vampire squids from hell though.

They're quite similar to the ones in Natureshock: Killer Squid Invasion (Channel 5). I've been looking forward to this documentary for a while, mostly because it's called Natureshock: Killer Squid Invasion, but also because the trailers have been promising stories of fishermen being dragged from their boats and swallowed alive by these Pacific monsters. But it turns out the whole death-by-squid episode is only mentioned briefly in passing. The victims – two Mexican fishermen apparently – aren't named, no family members are spoken to, or witnesses interviewed. It's almost as if the programme-makers know that it didn't really happen.

• Television
• Drama

Sam Wollaston
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I had very little idea what was going on but you can't beat a bank-holiday Miss Marple

It's the end of August bank holiday. You're tired, after carnival, or golf, or whatever it is you do. A quiet night in is the answer, in front of a nice TV drama. There's a choice. Either a), a chocolate-box whodunnit set in a spooky Tudor inn and featuring a bunch of suspicious oily-haired toffs and a well-loved amateur lady detective. Or b), a grim story of modern-day slavery, based on a true story – thousands of true stories in fact. My guess is you went for a.

Not that Agatha Christie's Marple (ITV) was easy. As is usual with these things, I had very little idea what the flipping heck was going on. Some quite bad people seem to think they're having spells cast on their victims who then die, meaning the quite bad people get rich. But in fact the black magic (there's that chocolate box) is just a front. What's actually going on is that a really bad dude is murdering these people, with his ringworm lotion, and also running a sinister gambling scam whereby you can bet on whether or not someone will still be alive at a certain time (they won't be, because he's killing them). I'm thinking the Pakistan cricket team could somehow be behind all this and they've ramped up the evil a couple of notches, bowling murders instead of no-balls. No-lives.

Miss Marple has plenty of balls, figuratively speaking, and pokes her nose unassumingly but purposefully into everyone else's business. And when she's cracked it, anyone who's still alive gathers in an oak-panelled room for a lengthy denouement. There's a word that takes confidence to use in conversation: it's from the French, denouer, to unknot. Interesting that we like to tie up loose ends, and the French do the opposite. Quite interesting.

Turns out the really bad dude is the really nice guy, just about the only person I didn't suspect at some point. One nil to Agatha, again. It's all totally loop-the-loop bonkers of course, and strangely unsatisfying when all is revealed. But there are some nice performances from – as you'd expect of Miss Marple on a bank holiday – an all-star cast. Even though I couldn't figure out whodunnit (or even what was happening to be honest) I had fun spotting people. There's Shirley Valentine, and can that old man in a wheelchair really be Neil from The Young Ones? More bizarrely still, the vicar seems to be Nicholas Parsons! Oh, not for long he's not, he gets coshed on the head in a dark alley – without hesitation or deviation but with some repetition, just to be sure. Oh, and Julia McKenzie has become a lovely Miss Marple, who fits the part like an expensive brown suede glove.

If you elected for I am Slave (Channel 4) you would have had a very different kind of evening, one which would have probably left you feeling angry instead of mildly amused and bemused. But maybe also unsatisfied. Yes, it was a powerful story – of a young girl, Malia, who is kidnapped from her village in the Nuba mountains of Sudan, then sold into slavery, first in Khartoum and then in London. And shocking – there are 5,000 young girls in a similar situation in London today, we're told at the end. And 20,000 people have been enslaved in Sudan.

But it wasn't great drama. The dialogue was stilted, the flashbacks were crude, and the characters were two dimensional – the women who "owned" Malia, in Sudan and in Britain, were almost pantomime wicked witches. To me it felt as if it was issue led, its purpose to highlight the problem. Which it did, but not in a way that was especially moving or engaging. A pity.

Jovial wildlife man Nigel Marven has always wanted to cuddle a baby panda. Which he does – several of them, at a Chinese breeding centre, in Panda Week With Nigel Marven (Five). But first he has to put on a plastic suit so as not to pass on any nasty human bugs to them. Then, when he finally gets in among them, they do their best to duff him up – they're vicious little buggers, to be honest. And they're not all lovely and soft and fluffy, as you would imagine or hope. They're bristly and coarse; it's a bit like being in a tumble drier with a bunch of giant piebald Brillo pads. They've probably got fleas as well. Maybe some dreams are best left unrealised.

• Television
• Drama
• Agatha Christie

Sam Wollaston
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Gorillas can behave very strangely – and so can the people who watch them

I feel like I know the Virunga volcanoes of central Africa quite well. I've been there often, without having left the sofa, obviously, to see the gorillas. I actually recognise some of them, they've been on the telly so often. Yup, that's Titus, the most successful silverback of all time (I think Dian Fossey was actually Titus's mother and she abandoned him in the mist, but I could be wrong).

I'm sure I recently saw a documentary about Titus coming to the end of his reign, being deposed by his own son. Now that seems to be happening again, here in Mountain Gorilla (BBC2, Sunday). It's a different son this time. And a different narrator: Patrick Stewart, lush as the Rwandan rainforest.

Mountain gorillas really are horrid creatures. Young males beat up their ageing fathers at the first sign of weakness. Thanks, dad, for the years of nurturing, education, love and protection – now I'm going to kill you. Where's the respect? Males will murder babies that aren't their own, then mate with the traumatised mothers. And they like to do their love-making in front of the ones that aren't getting any, just to rub it in. The females aren't an awful lot better. The moment their fella turns his back, they're looking around to see if there's anything better around. It's all about status, and chest-pummelling. Plus they scratch too much and are ugly as sin. Yes, you, prune face.

Yet, judging by the amount of telly time they get, we love them, almost to the point of obsession. And all these people devote their lives to them, living in the jungle, recording their behaviour. Like Dian Fossey herself, and now this modern-day Dian Fossey, Martha Robbins, who has devoted 20 years of her life to gorillas. Every day she leaves her house early in the morning and walks for up to four hours to where she left her group the previous day. She follows them, with her notebook and her camera, meticulously documenting the tiniest details of their lives. Fascinating. I think her behaviour is at least as interesting as the gorillas'.

Titus loses the battle with his son. Now he's dying. There's no coming back from this one, fella. The time has come, says Patrick Stewart theatrically, for the "crowning of a new silverback, and the last stand of the silverback king". It's a moment of almost Shakespearean tragedy. Or just nature taking its course.

I'm not a massive fan of horses either: too nervy and long of face. I don't like their teeth, or the way they kick. Martin Clunes: Horsepower (ITV1, Sunday) has been nice, though, a gentle trot through the history of man's relationship with them. "Our world wouldn't be the same without the horse," he says. "For thousands of years this was our car, our wagon . . ."

Hang on, that's not right, Martin. The horse wasn't our wagon, was it? Surely, the wagon was our wagon and the horse was the thing that pulled it? Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Martin goes to the races and backs the wrong one. He gets on his high one at a rehearsal for the Queen's ceremonial opening of parliament. A midwest rodeo is so much fun that wild ones couldn't drag him away. (Yeah, all right, drop the horse idioms now.) Also, why didn't he have a go on the bucking bronco? That would have made it even more fun.

Best of all, Martin visits the beautifully stark Altai mountains of central Asia where Kazakh nomads still rely on them. No high horses to get on here: they're tiny, and Martin, all 6ft 3in of him, looks ridiculous on one. But it takes off at terrific speed, and suddenly Martin isn't Doc Martin, or that annoying bloke off Men Behaving Badly – he's Genghis bloody Khan.

The locals seem to like him, so much so that they give him one of their precious horses, as a gift you could say. Guess which part of its face he looks it in . . . Honestly, he doesn't take it, says he couldn't get it home on the plane. Nonsense Martin, look at the size of it. You could get that on as hand luggage.

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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Grief, guilt, tears, cupcakes and chardonnay – Mistresses, you've been great fun

Mistresses (BBC1) ended its three-series run last night not with a bang – because this has been Serious Mistresses, in Sexless Cardigans – but with a lot of whimpering. We had Richard's funeral, at which Wee Trudi McTinyscot discovered that her late husband had had a thing for Katie, although they had never actually Done It. Katie got no credit for having broken the habit of a lifetime (that is, exercising a spot of vaginal rectitude), so the four friendships disintegrated in a maelstrom of grief, accusations, guilt and tears, only to be mended again through the magic of ovarian cancer: in this case, Jessica's. They met, they cried, they bonded, they decided which of the licit and illicit partners they actually wanted to be with and – with the semi-divine intercession of Joanna Lumley as Katie's mother – they eventually forgave each other and themselves for all their many (many, many, many) failings. Whether the ladies will do the same for the scriptwriters' ("I've been doing some thinking." "What do you mean?") I doubt, but overall it's been fun. Ladies, I raise a chardonnay and Levonelle-flavoured cupcake to you all.

E Numbers: An Edible Adventure (BBC2) was a programme that seemed to have eaten too many of the things in question. Food writer Stefan Gates promised at the outset that he would be "exploring, making and eating" a variety of food additives in an attempt to discover whether our prejudices against them are justified, or if the food manufacturers' friends have for years been unfairly traduced.

What followed was maddeningly superficial. Ruth Goodman (domestic historian star of Victorian Pharmacy) showed us how lead chromate was used to make milk look creamier, and red lead to colour sweets, at the price of toxicity and death. The serving of Brussels sprouts that had been made to taste of mango and blackcurrant to formerly vegetable-resistant kids suggested that Gates had not sufficiently thrown off his guise as presenter of the children's series Gastronuts.

Most adults, for example, can probably hazard a guess at why colours are added to food. We do not need to be taken painstakingly through the canning of peas with E102 (tartrazine) and E113 (brilliant blue – making lovely emerald-green peas!) and without (making beige peas, peas that look like they have the world's worst hangover) to know that it's better to restore colour lost to fresh food during processing before you try and flog it.

There were fun moments. Food scientist Alice Pegg tricked an entire magnum of wine club members into thinking the white wine they were drinking was red, by tinting it appropriately – which, as someone who believes that we should be allowed to hunt amateur oenophiles for sport, provided me with much schadenfreude. Deeper issues got only cursory mention. Gates noted concerns about some additives' possible links with hyperactivity and the "feeling wrong"ness of adding chemicals derived from petroleum to our food, but nothing was investigated or put into context.

As a children's teatime fodder it would have been impressively lively and informative, but as an offering to adults it needed to be a little less colourful. Plainer, more substantial fare suits us better.

A six-year-old boy surveying the scenes of devastation after he is lifted out of the house in which he and his family have been trapped by the inexorably rising waters the day after Hurricane Katrina puts it best. "This," he says with vehemence, "is real STUFF."

Hurricane Katrina: Caught on Camera (Channel 4) was a record of that stuff from the video cameras and mobile phones of the people who were there. It did not focus on the wider context – the slow and lacklustre response of the US government and military to the disaster, and whether this derived from the poverty of the region and the colour of its inhabitants – except for occasional outbursts of rage from the mayor. "Don't tell me 40,000 troops are coming here," he says in a radio interview during the crisis. "They're NOT here." But it reminded us of the scale of the disaster and stood as testimony to the people's suffering and stoicism. It was, indeed, real stuff.

• Television
• Mistresses

Lucy Mangan
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Simon's changed since his brain injury: he's a naughty toddler in a 21-year-old's body, writes Sam Wollaston

Watch My New Brain on 4oD

Simon Hales, star of My New Brain (Channel 4), was, by all accounts, a very nice young man. A student at Newcastle University, he was popular, easy-going, funny, smiley. He still can be – sometimes – but he's not the same nice young man he was before his fall. During a drunken night out, he fell off a wall. And although from the outside it looks as if all the king's horses and all the king's men did their thing successfully, inside Simon's not right. He suffered a serious traumatic brain injury.

Simon was in a coma for five weeks; then when he came round, he wasn't all there. Now his memory is terrible. He forgets everything – who people are, why he went to the supermarket and how to get home afterwards. His concentration is hopeless; he can't plan or organise anything. He obsesses about things, especially his accident and his coma. He has violent mood swings and an irrational hatred of his mum's lurcher, Spider. Spider's lovely.

This touching, human film – a poignant picture of how brain injury can affect someone and his family – follows Simon for several months of his rehab. It's incredibly frustrating, for Simon of course, but also for his mother and brothers. To George, 17, Simon was a big brother, someone to look up to; now George is helping him to clean his teeth and get into bed. There's something very sweet about that. And sometimes George gets a punch in the face for his troubles. It's like having a naughty toddler in the family again, in the body of a 21-year-old.

He does make some progress though - there are flashes of the old Simon. Weirdly, his sense of humour seems unaffected. Actually I have no idea what it was like before, but he's pretty funny now – dead sarcastic, but sharp as you like. "Don't fiddle with anything," his poor mum says to him in the car. "You're fiddling with my fucking life," he fires back. Sometimes there'll be a hug though, for mum or for George. And Simon still has a lovely smile.

The Wounded Platoon (BBC2) could be a movie. One band of brothers, ordinary Americans, fighting a war they barely understand on the other side of the world (you need to be reading this in your best movie trailer voice). They show great courage in the desert. But the relentlessness of war and then the death, by a home-made bomb, of their charismatic leader take their toll. Several go off the rails. Crazed, off their heads on drugs, still they fight on, fingers always on the trigger, shooting people for fun. And then, when they come home to America, the killing doesn't stop.

It's not Hollywood though, it's a shocking This World documentary, about the US soldiers who served in Iraq during the height of the war. Seventeen soldiers from one Colorado base have been convicted of murder, manslaughter or attempted murder – three from a single platoon. It's the hero-to-zero story, of what overlong tours and post-traumatic stress is doing to America's soldiers. Terrifying and depressing.

Great British Waste Menu (BBC1) is a nice idea. Chefs make delicious dishes from ingredients that are destined for the dustbin, in order to highlight the appalling waste that goes on in the food industry. It's such a good idea that someone had it before. Last year the Tonight team on ITV did a show called From Bin to Banquet, in which a chef made delicious dishes from ingredients that were destined for the dustbin, in order to highlight the appalling waste that goes on in the food industry. Hey, why waste a good idea for a programme, just because it's a little old and tired-looking? Reheat it instead. It's actually quite fitting.

I'm imagining Luke Gamble at a party. He's an affable vet in a show called Vet Adventures on Sky1. So he's in conversation with an attractive young lady (not really, in my imagination, OK?). And she asks him what he does for a living, because that's the kind of question she might ask him. And he says: "I rescue blind abandoned puppies, in Africa." And he wouldn't be lying. She'd never believe him though. Ha.

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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I won't miss them filming it on my street, but did they really have to axe The Bill?

After more than 25 years and countless changes of personnel, the doors of Sun Hill have finally closed. Well, almost. When you're the UK's longest-running police drama, you've earned the right to a lengthy deathbed scene, so the final episode of The Bill (ITV1) is being strung out over two weeks. Last night's opener was a no-expense-spared, "let's blow the budget" extravaganza with not just one but two car chases involving several cop cars racing around a south London estate, smashing through railings and practising handbrake turns.

It was also rather good. Over the years, The Bill has been pushed about, as if no one could quite work out what kind of show it really was. Did it work best in half-hour or hour slots? Should it be pre- or post-watershed? Was it a drama or a soap? With every tweak in the format, the ratings inevitably slipped a little further – if ITV didn't seem to have any confidence in the programme, why should the viewers? – until someone decided to pull the plug.

The Bill always worked best as an ensemble piece (attempts to make it a vehicle for one or two stars were never that successful) and the final story, about a gang killing on a council estate, was just that. The episode was called Respect; respect as in gang respect, respect as in the police gaining respect on the estate. And also, I suspect, respect as in a kick in the balls for the schedulers for showing a complete lack of respect for a programme that was still in fairly rude health.

There are a few things I won't miss about The Bill. Almost every year they would spend a day filming inside a house on our street. The night before, some heavy-duty parking attendants employed by the show would turn up and seal off all the parking spaces, making it impossible for you to park anywhere near your house. At dawn the next day, three sodding great lorries and a catering van would appear – all for what you could be fairly sure was going to end up as a 30-second shot of a stiff. Come to think of it, it's that kind of expense that might have partly done for the show.

Even so, you would have thought someone might have come up with the idea of trying to cut budget costs, rather than axe the show entirely. It's not as if there are any other decent cop shows – don't even think of comparing The Bill with the truly awful New Tricks – and there's going to be a huge hole in the ITV evening schedules come September.

Loss of a different kind was on offer in Lorraine Kelly's Big Fat Challenge (The Biography Channel). Last year, Kelly filmed the Chawners from Blackburn – or, as the programme loving described them, "Britain's fattest and laziest family" – in their attempts to lose weight. Predictably, after losing a few pounds in front of the cameras, they had all put most of it back on once the film crew had scarpered, as they reverted to a relentless daily routine of sausage and chips and 12 hours of TV, so Kelly was back to give them another prod. No doubt she will also be back this time next year when the Chawners have put back all the weight they will lose in this series.

Kelly is usually a fairly reliable judge of what makes a good TV show, but she has made a bad call here. She says "fingers crossed they've lost weight" at the initial weigh-in, when you know she means the opposite – the programme would be dead in the water if they had – and then confesses to being "worried they are more concerned about the fame of being on TV than exercising". Though not worried enough to take away the cameras and tell the Chawners she's not going to give them another second of airtime.

Within minutes of the programme starting it was clear that the Chawners were a dysfunctional family with severe emotional problems who need intensive psychological help rather than a TV crew in their front room. To be fair, Kelly does send them to see therapist Phillip Hodson, who does more in two minutes to help the Chawners than anyone else has done in years. But I fear it won't do any good, as next week Kelly is taking them to be humiliated by Kelvin MacKenzie shouting "you are lazy, fat spongers" at them. I can't think of a better way to ensure the Chawners continue to pile on weight.

The final of the final Big Brother (Channel 4) ended too late to make it into this review. Still, hats off to those of you who stuck it out. I stopped watching years ago.

• Television
• ITV1
• The Bill

John Crace
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A visit to the liver transplant unit is a profoundly sobering experience

Have you been watching … Grandma's House?

Here's a new game. It's like musical chairs but for grown-ups. It used to be mainly for the old, but more and more young people are getting into it. Actually even kids can play too, but they have to be fat kids. And the grown-ups should be drunk or on drugs, or both. Right, so when the music stops, it's not a chair you're looking for, but a liver. The consequences are the same though: if you don't find one, you're out. For ever. OK so far?

That's it basically. There are a few little extra rules. Like the livers aren't just in a big pile in the middle of the floor. That would be too messy, especially with everyone drunk or high or fat. So there's a bunch of guys in white coats, handing them out – they decide who to. And to make it even more challenging and exciting, it's not just the number of livers that goes down, but that more and more players get to join every round. So it becomes harder and harder to win. Good isn't it? I was thinking of calling it musical livers, but that's a bit obvious. So I've gone for the liver transplant unit of King's College Hospital in London as featured in The Hospital (Channel 4). Snappy. Or Russian roulette for short.

God, it's bleak. In the past five years the number of people coming in with so-called lifestyle-related liver disease has more than doubled. They're coming in younger and younger, with increasing numbers in their 20s. There simply aren't enough donor livers to go around for the people who would benefit from a transplant. Of the people put forward to go on the transplant list, only half get on. The meeting, in which doctors and social workers decide who makes the list and who doesn't, is a terrible event – a judgment based on age, health and lifestyle. It's hardly surprising there is resentment towards these people who decide; they have to play God. She lives, he doesn't, he lives . . . Well maybe lives. Because even once you're on the list you're not home and dry. Far from it. Twenty per cent of people on the list die before they get to surgery. And then 10% don't survive the operation.

The news isn't good for Francis, an old fellow who doesn't even get on the list. "That's disappointing," he says. Another old boy, Anthony, is luckier and gets one. "At the end of the day there's always a day of reckoning, and I know I've had mine," he says, after surviving his operation.

"At the end of the day" seems a fitting expressing to use, when it comes to liver disease, and it crops up again. Young Jackie had a big scare, but she's still out on the lash with her friend. "At the end of the day it's the society we live in, everyone goes out and has a drink and whatever," says the friend, and of course they drink to that.

I found myself getting quite angry with Jackie, and the others, not just for what she's doing to herself but for abusing the NHS. It's a rubbish game – why are they all playing it? But then maybe I am too. "An alcoholic or alcohol dependent probably isn't someone who's homeless and lying in the gutter," says cocky Dr Kosh Agarwal, consultant hepatologist and transplant physician at King's. "I see people who are maybe having half a bottle of wine every night over dinner, and maybe a bit more at the weekends. That's heavy drinking."

Half a bottle? With dinner? Hmm. Sobering thoughts.

I'm enjoying Grandma's House (BBC2) more and more. Simon Amstell can be ever so slightly annoying as himself. But I like the other characters – mum's boyfriend Clive with his crap jokes and his positive-thinking, self-help book attitude; Grandad with his "cancer" (which may be a raisin); Auntie Liz who no one takes any notice of unless it's to have a go at her appearance, especially now she's got her frilly Prince blouse; and young Adam who can't decide whether he's a child or a grown up – he knows he's interested in "pussy" but he also dropped his phone in the loo when he was taking a photo of his poo.

I watched this one twice and enjoyed it just as much second time round; that's a good sign in a sitcom. I don't know how long it will feel fresh. Could it survive a second series? I'm not sure. But right now there's a subtlety and a sharpness about it. And yeah, it's funny.

• Television
• Health
• Health & wellbeing
• Comedy

Sam Wollaston
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Part Roman emperor, part chief slaughterman, Cowell and his talent abattoir are back

X Factor Autotune row hits the wrong notes

Here we go again then. Can it really be time for The X Factor (ITV1, Saturday)? It seems like only five minutes ago . . . or maybe that was Britain's Got Talent. It's all one big talent contest now, all the time, for ever. Quite depressing.

So we're in Glasgow. And thousands of waiting hopefuls have been penned in with those metal crowd-control barriers. It's basically a livestock market, or an abattoir. I think we all know who the chief slaughterman is.

Cheryl hasn't got malaria yet. Dannii's off on maternity leave, so Ginger Spice is standing in this week, rabbiting on about not very much. Rabbit rabbit, bunny jabber, yup rabbit . . . oh, give it a rest. Louis Walsh? Well no one's that bothered by him, but at least since he had his teeth done last year he fits in, dentally. Hell, there are some bright teeth on that panel. Half-close your eyes, and all you can see is four white dashes across the middle of the screen, like a road from above, overtaking permitted. I think we all know who has the whitest.

He – Simon Cowell – controls everything, just by raising and lowering his hand. He's Julius Caesar . . . hang on, he's gone from meat-industry worker to Roman emperor. But he is both, and the Cheshire Cat as well. Brutal, all conquering, and very pleased with himself.

So the cattle/Christians/mice are herded into the slaughter house/arena/place where cats play with mice. The others on the panel may think they have some say in it, but I think we all know who really decides. Smiley Stephen, a 41-year-old househusband whose belly peeks out cheekily from under his jumper, gets through with an enthusiastic rendition of Disco Inferno. George, 70, a retired RAF pilot, doesn't make the cut. The oldies rarely do.

G&S (it stands for gay and straight), a double act, only half make it. G, 37, a truly terrible singer, steps aside in a gesture of selfless generosity to let S, 22, a very ordinary singer, go through without him. Presumably she's just called S now. It all feels a little staged, to give the show a story. Is this really real reality I'm watching, or drama?

Here's another story, an even better one. Eighteen-year-old Gamu came to Scotland from Zimbabwe with her mother and nothing else. Now she just wants to be somebody, and for people to say that the girl with the flower in her hair was great.

And you know what, they will, because she is. Her version of Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves is absolutely spellbinding. It has energy and soul, says Louis, and there's something very likable about Gamu. Louis always says that, that he likes them. She's got a lovely little spirit, says Cheryl. Geri would be proud, if she was Gamu's mum . . . yeah, shut up Geri, you're not, and anyway, no one's listening.

"I'm going to be honest . . . " says Simon. He's doing that thing he does, when he wants you to think he's going to say one thing, but then he says the opposite. Oh Simon, you big tease. But he always does it, so it's not such a massive surprise any more. "I'm going to be honest . . . I really, really, really like you!"

Yay! It's a yes from Louis. From Cheryl and Geri, too. Simon? You can't do the keep-'em-waiting pause thing again can you? No, he's "a million per cent yes". A million! Remember when a 100% was a lot? Then it was 110 you had to give. Now suddenly we're up to a million – that's totally times 10,000. Well, he is Simon Cowell, he's allowed to do that.

Gamu's crying. Her mum comes on stage (her real one, not Geri the hypothetical one), and she's crying too. Oh lordy, I think I've got a little lump in my throat as well. Well, Gamu is lovely, and she did sing so beautifully. Damn, I wasn't going to be manipulated, but I've somehow been sucked in. I'm not proud of it. I won't cry though, I won't, I won't, a billion per cent I won't.

Just about everyone else does, though. Well, everyone except you-know-who, obviously. He decides who cries, when and why. Everything Simon Cowell has – his gazillions, his power, his big Cheshire Cat grin – it all comes from other people's tears.

• Television
• The X Factor

Sam Wollaston
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Teen Undertaker | Roger and Val Have Just Got In | Pete Versus Life | BBC Proms | Dexter

Teen Undertaker

7.30pm, Channel 4

It speaks volumes about our uneasy attitude to death that the job of undertaker is seen as "not normal", whereas it's really no more uncommon a profession than, say, driving a bus, working in sales or reviewing TV shows. Laura and Paul are two young aspiring funeral directors; there's nothing weird about them, they just want to do the best job possible for the family of the bereaved and the deceased. The narration isn't too snide, although they do drop the clanger "stiff competition", but that may have been accidental, and it's nice to see a show that doesn't demonise teens.

Roger and Val Have Just Got In

10pm, BBC2

Dawn French and Alfred Molina's dour "comedy" spent half an hour on a row about a fridge last week; tonight, it's about the dining room curtains – though of course, it turns into something much more meaningful than whether the fabric is hanging correctly. Despite the intimacy of the home setting and the real-time unfolding of events, it's been hard to feel connected to Roger and Val. It's all so stagey and ever-so-slightly pleased with itself.

Pete Versus Life

10pm, Channel 4

Sitcoms about men in their 20s seem to arrive at the conclusion that their characters might be buffoons but, at bottom, they're decent guys. Not so Pete Versus Life: since episode one Pete (Rafe Spall) has been lurching from strong lager to furtive bunk-up with some gusto, wonderfully unconcerned about the consequences of his actions. Tonight's episode pits Pete against some strong opposition when he becomes involved with an older woman whom he meets at an art auction. What will summarisers Colin and Terry make of his performance?

BBC Proms 2010

7.30pm, BBC4

The 75th birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is celebrated with the first British performance of his Fourth Symphony. It's part of an audaciously diverse programme of modern classical music for the Philharmonia Orchestra and its Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. They'll also be attempting Foundry, a 1920s celebration of industrial labour by Soviet composer Alexander Mosolov, a piece by Mosolov's symbolist compatriot Scriabin – and, with the assistance of acclaimed French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Ravel's legendarily tricky Concerto for the Left Hand. Suzy Klein presents.

Madness – T In The Park

9.20pm, BBC4

A storming, hits-filled set from Camden's finest, although the pinnacle of their festival work this year looks like being their reported locking of Calvin Harris in a portable toilet at Camp Bestival. While the humour in their sharp songs means they will probably never be regarded as the classic band they clearly are, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone at their shows, either on stage or in the audience, without a massive grin plastered across their face. There's added chat and backstage footage as they get nutty in the park.

Dexter

10pm, FX

If life wasn't complicated enough as a serial killer on a mission, the fourth season of Dexter finds the pathologist/murderer trying to balance his killing commitments with the demands of fatherhood. Of course, there are comic moments here – the sleep-deprived parody of the iconic title sequence among them – but the keynote remains sinister. Much of this is down to John Lithgow's "Trinity Killer" – a figure only retired Agent Bundy actually believes exists.

• Television
• Dexter

Phelim O'NeillRebecca NicholsonJohn RobinsonAndrew Mueller
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Sensible outerwear, a purposeful stride, some bits of old pot – Dr Alice Roberts is back

Sarah Dempster's Mistresses blog

I have a recurring dream. It's quite common – the one where someone is coming to get you and for some reason you can't get away. Mine is quite specific. The someone is television's Dr Alice Roberts. She's walking towards me, walking and talking, lecturing me, about everything – bones, rocks, human evolution, wild swimming, Romans. You name it, she's got something to say about it. She's only coming at walking speed, and I can easily outpace her, but if I look over my shoulder she's always there. And while I need to rest at times, and sleep and eat, she never does – she comes on with an almost mechanical determination, and it is inevitable that she will catch me one day.

You don't have to be Freud to work out where my dream comes from. For one, Dr Alice is on TV pretty much every night – certainly any programme that involves wearing the kind of sensible outdoor clothing that might come from Blacks, and scraping around in the past. The BBC has discovered someone who's into this stuff and who doesn't have a beard, and they're going to milk her for all she's worth. There's also the fact that she's always doing the walking-towards-the-camera thing. Look, in Digging for Britain (BBC2), here she comes – at Vindolanda by Hadrian's Wall, in a Buckinghamshire field, in Suffolk, on a Kent beach, always coming towards you, walking and talking. Argh! I think only the camera-whirling-round-the-presenter thing is more annoying; that's more of a youth TV trick.

Ditches, coins, bits of old broken pot . . . to be honest, it's never really done it for me. Too much patience required, too much dirt involved. But what I do love is the people who are passionate about it. Like Dave the metal detectorist, who found a hoard of Roman coins in a Somerset field. And scholarly coin enthusiasts Roger and Sam, sorting Dave's find by Roman emperor, at a rate of 6,000 coins a week. And best of all, Caroline, at Ipswich Museum. "When objects like this come into the museum, as an archaeologist, that excitement never fails to hit me," she says about an unthrilling-looking, broken Roman lamp. "Because suddenly you are given another opportunity to shake hands with someone in the past." That's a lovely way of saying it. Maybe that's my problem – I'm just seeing the object. I need to see beyond the broken lamp to the person who once held it, and then I need to shake them by the hand.

Dr Alice shakes hands with the Roman soldiers who guarded the northern limits of the empire near Hadrian's Wall. She shakes the hand of a man who was mysteriously buried face down on a bed of meat. She shakes the tiny hands of 97 babies who were mysteriously murdered at Yewden Villa in Hambledon. OK, it's pretty fascinating, once you get to the human stories. I'd shake Dr Alice's hand, if only she'd stay still for a minute. Stop walking! And stay out of my dreams.

So I thought I'd just dip into Mistresses (BBC1), see what's going on. Bloody hell! What isn't going on? Trudi's getting jiggy with her new business partner, and her boyfriend Richard is getting jiggy with her best friend Katie. Siobhan's pretty damn close to getting jiggy with her ex, Dominic, even though he's now living with his new wife (in Siobhan's house, maybe not ideally for the new missus).

There's a Brief Encounter moment at Bristol Temple Meads railway station; will Richard show up, to run off with Katie? Or won't he? OMG, no he won't, because suddenly he's dead, squashed in the Mercedes under a lorry. Well, I think he's dead – you can't be sure of anything in Mistresses.

Best line of the night goes to Jessica. "You know what I've just realised?" she says to Mark the shark. "I'm not playing poker with my future any more." Quite right, cash your chips in and get the hell out of the casino. Go, girl. Oh, but Mark's already cashed them in. And a fair few of Siobhan's, too. Oops, and Jessica's finally up the duff, because that particular five-minute section of drama needed a BIG EVENT. Seems like the poker may not quite be over for Jessica after all.

It is ridiculous, preposterous even, certainly wrong, a sugary pudding of groans and cliches. And it's ever so slightly addictive.

• Mistresses
• Television
• Documentary

Sam Wollaston
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Richard Dawkins takes on the faith schools – without getting too apoplectic, writes Sam Wollaston

When Richard Dawkins's daughter was 10, he tells us in Faith Schools Menace? (More4), he wrote her a letter asking her to think for herself about how we know the things we do. "How do we know," he wrote, "that the stars that look like tiny pinpricks in the sky are really huge balls of fire, like the sun, and are very far away?" He wanted her to believe that something was true only if there was evidence for it, not because someone was telling her to believe it, and he signed off "your loving Daddy". Quite sweet: you don't really think of Dawkins as a loving daddy.

His daughter wrote back. "Hey Dad. Thanks for your interesting letter. You could always talk to me you know. I'm the one sitting at the other side of the table in the morning. Anyway, I've taken on board your stuff. I know you're well into evolution, but I'm not going to believe it just because you say it's true. Or because Darwin invented it a million years ago; old doesn't necessarily mean true either. I thought I'd make my own mind up, like you said. So I'm looking at the evidence; me on the one hand, and a chimpanzee on the other (big hairy) hand. And I'm thinking: cousins? Are you having a laugh? No way. And then I read this book, called the Qur'an, and that seemed to make a lot more sense. So I've decided to become a Muslim, ha ha ha. I'm the one in a hijab at the other side of the table. God is great. Lots of love."

Actually, guess what – no she didn't. But it would have been amusing if she had. Interesting that he communicates with his daughter by letter, though.

He does try hard to be nice with the children in the programme; he teaches them an old-fashioned playground game to show their propensity to learn and pass things on. And he hijacks an assembly, though they appear to be more interested in the camera than in the famous scientist off the telly.

It's not just God he's got it in for this time, but faith schools. Of course, he's right. Faith schools are a menace. It's a disgrace that the state pays for our children to be divided and indoctrinated with irrational belief. And the hypocrite parents who go to church so their kids can get into supposedly better schools should rot in hell, or whatever the evolutionary equivalent is (turn into lizards and slither back into the primordial slime?). His arguments are faultless, his thinking crystal clear; it's fascinating. Most interesting is that children display a natural bias towards some kind of religion, to read meaning into something when there is none, to look for stories. Or, put another way, there's evidence to show that we are programmed not to look at the evidence. Dawkins has got a battle on his hands, but hell, he's going to fight it.

Actually, he seems to be trying to keep the rage in check. Perhaps someone had a word: he seems less purple and apoplectic than he was on his last TV outing, less fundamental in his atheism, less likely to blow himself – and thousands of others – up in the name of Darwin. He even listens, and then decides he's right, obviously. Good value, on the telly. But you'd still get into God, if you were his daughter. Just to annoy him.

It's all very well being sure about how we got here if you're Richard Dawkins and you've got an enormous brain and were educated at Oundle school, which encourages questioning and science and everything. But for Wismond, a young man in the powerful documentary This World: Surviving Haiti (BBC2), it's a different story. The supermarket he worked in fell down in the earthquake; he was in the rubble for 11 days before being dug out. That's a long time to be buried in the dark, thinking about stuff, not knowing whether he was going to get out or not.

He got God big time down there. Well, the earthquake was obviously a punishment. And the fact that, when it hit, Wismond was in an aisle that contained cheese puffs and Coca-Cola (both of which he could access even after the building collapsed on him), was clearly a sign that his time wasn't up yet. As soon as Wismond got out, he was spreading the word. If God gives you Coke and cheese puffs, you pay him back.

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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Digging For Britain | Getting On | Coming Up: I Don't Care; The Future Wags Of Great Britain | BBC Proms 2010 | Drop Dead Diva | Yorkshire Ripper Hoaxer

Digging For Britain
9pm, BBC2
As anyone who has been on one knows, archaeological digs involve long hours of backbreaking tedium spent scraping at the earth with a trowel, and occasional moments of exciting discovery. The ebullient Dr Alice Roberts cuts to the quick and explores finds along the Roman fort site Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall, including a man buried face-down on a bed of meat. Helpfully, she explains the influence of the Roman occupation in Britain along the way.

Getting On
10pm, BBC2
The third and final part sees Nurse Kim in trouble because of an alleged offensive remark she made about Matron Loftus. The ensuing "conflict resolution strategy meeting" doesn't go too well. There's some confusion over matron's sexuality, which is of special concern to sister Den, as they had something of a date (and a little bit more) together. Matron's revenge for the slur is a deep cleaning of the ward. It's all beautifully underplayed and sweetly nuanced – but only three episodes?

Coming Up: I Don't Care; The Future Wags Of Great Britain
11.10pm, 11.40pm, Channel 4
These fine short films showcasing new talent both present being young today as almost inescapably bleak. The Future Wags of Great Britain, directed by Destiny Ekaragha, tells of two London sisters beset by financial woe who hatch a scheme to go clubbing in order to place bets based on the gossip they pick up from footballers who hang out there. In I Don't Care, Iwan Rheon stars as Luka, a young man with a rare day off from the long-term care of his bedridden mother, whose search for adventure in a dull retirement town goes sadly awry.

BBC Proms 2010
7.30pm, BBC4
Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform the four Sea Interludes from Britten's Peter Grimes, the composer's operatic masterpiece about a fisherman accused of murder, which Britten intended as an allegory for man's struggle against the masses. Britten's pastoral vision inspired Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, also performed here, alongside Symphony No 5 by Shostakovich, written when the two composers were great friends and admirers of each other's work.

Drop Dead Diva
8pm, Living
Return of the brain-free legal/romantic/fantasy/comedy genre-buster with a twist. Jane's a dead model in a fat lawyer's body with a guardian angel and knowledge of both her life and that of the body's she now inhabits. Please don't think it's as complex as it sounds. It's dumber than soup. Tonight, Jane must use her skills as "a really good person" to outwit the legal team behind a medical insurance giant who are about to let a cute little girl die rather than fork out for her treatment. Meanwhile, Jane juggles the arrival of her long-lost husband and her new relationship with Tony, but is it Tony she really wants? Take your analgesics now.

Yorkshire Ripper Hoaxer
9pm, National Geographic
In 1979, a man with a north-eastern accent sent a cassette tape to Yorkshire police in which he claimed to be responsible for the "Ripper" murders. A sinister prank, whatever, but by diverting resources away from the trail of the true killer, the hoaxer allowed Peter Sutcliffe to continue killing undetected for a further two years – later, he even claimed to have been "trying to help". This gripping documentary tells the story of the hoax, and of the investigation into this fatal waste of police time. JR

• Television

Will HodgkinsonMartin SkeggDavid StubbsJulia RaesideJohn Robinson
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Once you've seen one person cream butter and sugar together, haven't you seen them all?

I was born without the competitive spirit. I play the most satisfying words in Scrabble, not the highest-scoring or the most strategically advantageous and will take myself out with the lead piping if I am ever forced to play Cluedo again. So perhaps my perspective is skewed, but I must ask – isn't competitive baking a contradiction in terms? It sounds as antithetical as competitive reading or competitive bath-soaking. Even Sue Perkins, back with her Late/Light Lunch pal Mel Giedroyc to present The Great British Bake-Off (BBC2) remarks upon it ("isn't it a peaceful thing, for communing with yourself?"). But clearly in others the urge to be tested against others is one too powerful to resist.

The other odd thing about The Great British Bake-Off, in which 10 home bakers were herded into a marquee to handmix their way to glory, was the humourlessness that pervaded the proceedings. The choice of a comedy duo as presenters must mean that someone at some point recognised that here we have an activity that lends itself to the lighthearted approach and that you might well need jokes, wit, banter of some description to get viewers through the essentially untelevisual process of cake-making. Once you've seen one person cream butter and sugar together, you have very much seen them all.

So why not let them leaven the mix? Mel and Sue managed to sneak in the occasional intelligent and funny riff here and there – about how a rejection of our food amounts to a rejection of ourselves, after Mark is reduced to tears by the judges of his slightly sunken marmalade tea loaf, for example. But it still seemed to be a programme that had had the lightness deliberately beaten out of it. It hurts to see such good ingredients wasted.

Still, a programme about making cakes cannot be all bad, and by the end every viewer must have been on a proxy-sugar high at the sight of the tiers of chocolate fudge cake, serried ranks of Victoria sponges, brownie-and-meringue layers and lemon-drizzled delights. Eight of the contestants are through to next week's competition. We said goodbye to poor Mark (whose heart was clearly broken) and to Lea, who suffered a split ganache – less painful but still as catastrophic as it sounds – in the final challenge. Maybe next week, in Scotland, Mel and Sue will be allowed to aerate the process and we can all have a laugh while we drool as well.

In The Making of King Arthur (BBC4), the poet Simon Armitage traced the evolution of our once and future king; from the shadowy spirit that animated the ancient poems of the Welsh bards, through his reinvention by Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Norman-esque hero to help his overlords (and sponsors) secure their hold over the land and culture of the conquered people, to his relegation to bit part player once Robert Wace introduced the round table and writers across Europe seized the chance to send its knights off on awe-inspiring quests. Chrétien de Troyes had him cuckolded by Lancelot (never trust a Frenchman with either your wife or your national folklore is the lesson for today, people) but Sir Thomas Malory managed to restore him to greatness in Le Morte D'Arthur 300 or so years later. All we have to do now is wait for the return of the man himself, as I'm sure our hour of greatest need is fast approaching. If not, perhaps he could just make a quick visit to Mark, cut himself a slice of tea loaf with Excalibur and reassure the man that it's delicious.

The Making of King Arthur was less substantial than other parts of the Norman history strand the BBC has been running for the last few weeks. It was mildly diverting to see clips from Armitage's father's panto version of the Arthurian legend, for example, but not useful. Another digression, to see the last remaining member of the family that claims to be in possession of the Holy Grail was surreally moving. After deciding that Armitage was pure enough in heart ("You like poetry"), Fiona Mirylees unwrapped a wooden fragment and let him touch it. Even if you didn't believe, it was clear that she did and it was, as Armitage said, a testament to the power and persistence of the stories we are told and those we tell ourselves

Ideal (BBC3), the tale of shut-in drug dealer Moz (Johnny Vegas) began its sixth series last night with Moz apparently being decapitated by PC Phil. From there, things unfolded with their usual skill, with Vegas's beautiful, idiosyncratic brand of melancholic comedy infusing everything. It now comes with added Sean Lock – as Brian's ex- and now transgendered wife. Rich, dark and satisfying as best plum cake.

• Television

Lucy Mangan
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Will we ever find out the truth about the deadly attack on the Gaza aid flotilla?

It was billed as the most thorough investigation yet into the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla in May this year that left nine people dead. And BBC reporter Jane Corbin's Death in the Med (BBC1) for Panorama was certainly a great deal more revealing than anything that has appeared so far. Yet for all the previously unseen footage from onboard the Mavi Marmara and the interviews with both the Turkish peace activists and the Israeli commandos, it was still hard to piece together what exactly did happen.

There was an admission from a senior Israeli that the commandos had encountered more resistance than expected and that perhaps they ought to have thought twice before sending in the helicopters, but the bigger questions went unanswered: who fired live rounds first? Why did the Israelis think it was acceptable to attack an aid convoy in international waters? Was the Mavi Marmara actually carrying aid to Gaza?

Predictably, the film veered between claim and counter-claim. The Israelis said the IHH – a Turkish humanitarian NGO – workers on board were linked to Hamas. The IHH said its members were doing what anyone would do when under attack, and that they had gone out of their way not to kill anyone. The Israelis – and Corbin, surprisingly – claimed the Mavi Marmara was carrying worthless aid, because the medicines were out-of-date – though these seem a fairly precious resource in a war zone.

No one came out of these exchanges particularly well – though the Palestinians won easily on points – and you couldn't have asked for a better illustration of the mutual distrust between Israel and the Arab world. Most depressing of all is the certain knowledge that the UN inquiry that's due to report back later this month is unlikely to be any more revealing.

Just as depressing was Angus Macqueen's third instalment of Our Drug War (Channel 4). Over the last few weeks Macqueen has been trying to persuade us of the need to legalise drugs – a project with a gaping logical flaw. Just because the current system isn't working, it doesn't follow that the only alternative is legalisation, and he appears to have given little thought to the possible social costs of such a move.

This week, though, he was on much stronger ground with what was more exposé than polemic. Travelling to all corners of Afghanistan, Macqueen laid bare the corruption and the realpolitik of the heroin trade in a country where the drugs mafia are part of the government and the only people to be arrested are small-time peasants. All of which goes on with the tacit approval of the British government and other Nato countries, who turn a blind eye because they would much rather have a pro-western government dealing drugs on an industrial scale than the Taliban. What efforts British forces do make to wipe out poppy fields only drives the locals to the Taliban as there is no other work on offer. In a well-constructed programme, Our Drugs War encapsulated the pointlessness of our involvement in Afghanistan.

Thank God, then, for In Their Own Words (BBC4), a journey through the BBC archives of great British novelists. Last night's episode covered the years 1919-39 and there was something magical about seeing and hearing writers with whom one has only previously had a print relationship. We started with Virginia Woolf and the self-regarding Bloomsbury Group declaiming their own brilliance in a stream of consciousness, and raced through Britain's literary Who's Who. Gem followed gem; cut-glass accent followed cut-glass accent; cigarette followed cigarette.

Delights included EM Forster declaring sadly that "I was never as good a writer as I wanted to be"; Jean Rhys saying "I'd rather be happy than write"; Evelyn Waugh dismissing Woolf as "gibberish" – pronouncing the word with a hard g – and dismissing anyone who praised or criticised him as "an arse . . . I prefer to be ignored".

Top billing went to Robert Graves in discussion with Malcolm Muggeridge about homosexuality, with Graves asserting there were two kinds of homosexuality and that a man pretending to be a girl and sleeping with a man was of a very different order to a man being a man and sleeping with a man. "I'm not a faggot myself," said Graves. "I'll give you full credit for that," Muggeridge replied. If you missed it, catch it on iPlayer. It's pure gold. Next week's instalment can't come soon enough.

• Television

John Crace
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Puerile, silly and shameless – a few people might be vexed by Vexed. But I loved it.

As chat-up lines go, it's pretty much up there with the very worst. "Costa Ricans, good people," says policeman Jack to the attractive woman buying coffee at the supermarket, in new comedy cop drama Vexed (BBC2, Sunday). Even Jack, not a man who lacks confidence or has a surfeit of self-awareness, realises it's bad. So he goes for a different approach. He (mis-)uses his police powers to get the attractive woman's loyalty card company to hand over all the information they have on her – her address, a list of everything she's ever bought. Then he just happens to find himself sitting at an outside table at the cafe next to her house, reading Midnight's Children – which by happy coincidence is the book she bought that very morning ("You like Rushdie?"). And he's on a fast track to her bed. Nice one, high five. Well, nice until she finds his printout of her card bill, then it all goes wrong.

Hell, it makes you think about those loyalty schemes. I always thought the worry was just about what commercial use all the data collected would be put to, not about corrupt detectives worming their way into your knickers. Or having your kneecaps smashed with a rolling pin, which is what Jack's police partner Kate does to her husband when she gets his loyalty card information (it turns out he's not having the affair she thinks is he, of course). Or being bludgeoned to death, which is what happens to three sad, lonely women who like cats, chocolate, teddy bears, Mamma Mia, all that kind of stuff. They all have Honey Bee cards. Honey Bee, see what they did there? (No? Think about what bees collect in order to make honey. Clue: it's not Tesco Club.) I'm cutting mine up immediately, before I'm knee-capped, murdered, or shagged by a cop – not necessarily in that order.

There's actually quite a nice little crime plot in here, about the linked killings and the loyalty schemes, but that's not really the point. The point is the will-they-won't-they chemistry between the two principal characters. Toby Stephens is fabulous as übertwerp Jack. He has a nice, pleased-as-punch-with-himself complacency, changing his voice and raising an eyebrow when he talks to ladies. There's a hint of self-doubt there, but not enough to stop him being a total cock. And Lucy Punch as Kate is excellent at being appalled by him, but also just a tiny bit impressed, even attracted to him. Together they're wonderfully awful.

There's some subtle but incisive analysis of gender politics . . . Oh, is there bollocks. It's cheeky, irreverent, puerile, sometimes inappropriate ("is that a fashion statement or do you think she's having chemo?" says Jack about a woman with no hair). It also made me laugh, almost out loud a few times, and that's no bad thing in a comedy.

The one thing I don't get is why it's called Vexed. It means angered or irritated, right? Perhaps the title refers to anticipated viewer reaction; I imagine that's how a lot of people are going to feel. But I like it.

Stephen Tompkinson is the vet in superlame safari drama Wild at Heart. An actor hasn't properly made it until they've done a travelogue, and last year he drifted slowly, and largely uninterestingly, over Africa with his ballooning chums. Someone must have liked it, though – in Stephen Tompkinson's Australian Balloon Adventure (ITV1, Sunday), he's doing the same somewhere else. Wow, it's great up here, the air's so clean, amazing view! Yeah all right, be quiet now.

Wait, though – now they're coming down, and suddenly there's way too much wind, they're totally out of control. The basket bumps into the ground, bounces, someone on the ground grabs hold, they go back up, he falls . . . Hang on, that's not this, that's Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. But they really do come down very fast. The basket is dragged along the ground on its side for an awfully long way, like a trawling net being dragged along the seabed. Tompkinson and his mates are playing the scallops, and there's nothing ethical about the way they're being caught. Wow, that's better Stephen – exciting, even. From now on (there are two more of these) can we have less of the drifting and the views, and more crashing please?

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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Dan Cruickshank gets very excited watching these home movies from the past

Is there anything as dull as holiday videos? (Clue: no, there isn't). Other people's are the worst, but even your own aren't great. It was a crap holiday, Dad ruined it by filming everything. Look how pissed off we all look.

There is a way of making them more interesting – the films, not the holidays: hide them away somewhere where they will be forgotten for decades. It doesn't matter if the film – the Super 8 or whatever it is – gets a bit damaged over time. It doesn't matter if you sadly die before it's discovered. One of your descendants can find it, in an old trunk, or an attic. The important thing is that it needs to be forgotten about for a while – no less then 30 years, ideally.

Then when it does turn up, and the boffins have sorted it out, repaired it or transferred it from Super 8 or whatever, it can be watched again. And suddenly it's not someone's boring holiday film, it's social history.

Look how the children ate sand because there was nothing else to eat and all the money had gone on the train fare to Blackpool. And how people used to go swimming fully clothed, ties and everything! And then as you come forward in time, the clothes gradually fall away. "I must say it is an extraordinary transformation," says an excited Dan Cruickshank, who along with Kirsty Wark is sifting through all this treasure. "From virtually all flesh covered up to virtually naked." By the time he's got to the word naked, he can hardly contain himself. He rocks backwards and foward, blinking with bewilderment and joy.

Even better than the holiday footage is an old film of a German warship, scuppered in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands after the first world war, being raised to the surface again. It's an extraordinary operation. In fearsome seas, men go down wearing comedy ancient diving suits to plug the holes before tubes are lowered so the ship can be pumped full of air. It is, just as Cruickshank says, "like a mighty whale coming up". Naked flesh isn't the only thing that gets Dan going.

• Television
• Social history
• Family holidays
• Family
• Television industry

Sam Wollaston
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Beckii is 15 and famous in Japan for dancing on the web. Isn't that a little bit odd?

Rebecca Flint, or Beckii Cruel as she renamed herself, has big eyes, a sharp chin, fluffy hair and slender limbs. It's a look that, in the cartoon worlds of anime and manga, is about as cute as it gets. So when Beckii posted a video of herself dancing to a Japanese pop song in her bedroom at home on the Isle of Man, she became an instant internet sensation 6,000 miles away in Japan. She's the subject of Beckii: Schoolgirl Superstar at 14 (BBC3), a fascinating but worrying documentary.

Beckii's parents' first thought was: "Hang on, what's going on here then?" But then a couple of things persuaded them that it was all actually OK. First of all, there's the fact that in Japan it's perfectly acceptable for pretty young girls to be worshipped in a way that is a bit creepy anywhere else. Cultural differences: you've got to accept them, haven't you? And when you factor in Beckii's earning potential, suddenly it all becomes absolutely fine.

So she goes over there, gets a manager, does a photo book, dances on TV, does a shoot with a sumo wrestler. And the YouTube hits stack up. We don't find out who exactly is watching Beckii's dancing videos, but another British girl trying to make it over there, 16-year-old Gemma, has done some research into her own YouTube demographic. Of her male fans, which make up 53% of her audience, a tiny proportion are in the 13-to-17 age range; the biggest are in the 45-to-54 group. That's a bit alarming, isn't it?

Apparently not. "Any mother of teenage daughters knows they're going to get a bit of extra attention, so what can you do about it?" giggles Gemma's mum.

Beckii, meanwhile, receives gifts from her fans; one in particular sends her boxes of noodles and a Fender bass guitar for her 15th birthday. They've met him on their trips to Japan. "He's very quiet," says Beckii's mum. "Very nice, very shy, as most Japanese men are." She doesn't say how old he is, but admits there's a massive gap.

Beckii's dad, policeman Derek, has thought seriously about how much he'd like his daughter to earn to make up for her school work suffering. "The GCSE year has to be worth £50,000 to compensate for the deterioration in grades," he says. "It would be a tragedy to miss that 15 minutes of fame. And not maximise it to the extent that she could set herself up very comfortably."

Quite right. What are children for, if not for cashing in on? No, it's her money, he says. "If she wants to buy me a nice car, I'm not going to turn it down. Or pay my mortgage off, that'd be great – thanks Rebecca."

They don't say how much they've made so far, but it's clearly not enough, because Derek's now getting involved, bringing in new people to help her record singles, stuff that might appeal beyond Japan. I'm not convinced it's going to work. Because while she may look like a character in a Japanese cartoon, she doesn't have the greatest singing voice in the world, and isn't even the greatest dancer. Why should she be? She's just 14. OK, 15 now.

Beckii seems remarkably level-headed, and doesn't seem to need advice from anyone. But I'm going to offer mine anyway. Maybe don't give up on the old GCSEs, just in case the noodles stop coming through the letterbox (as the ancient Japanese saying goes). And dad can take care of his own mortgage. Well, at least until you're 16.

There's something of teen drama The OC about Natural World: California Sea Otters (BBC2). A troubled otter – or "arder", because this film has a syrupy narration from Bonnie Greer – from the rocky coast of central California takes up residence among the gleaming yachts of a luxury marina in Monterey Bay. There are problems and misunderstandings. She (the otter, not Bonnie) doesn't know that, in polite society, it's not on to crack open your shellfish against millionaires' boats. There are problems with the other posh marina otters, too – fights and jealousies, love across the tracks. Somehow, she struggles on, against the odds.

The ones who stay put in the wild seem to have it easier, now that they're no longer hunted for fur. They lie in the kelp, sunning their bellies; it looks lovely. A sea otter floating around on its back is a very cute thing. Some of them have posted themselves on YouTube. Check them out. Unless you're a dirty old man.

• Television

Sam Wollaston
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