Sick of being fed rubbish

WADING through the schedules at this time of year, you may find yourself overwhelmed, not so much by the quality of what’s on offer but by the quantity of rather dreadful stuff you have to sift through in order to find it.

Christmas does seem to provide programme makers with an excuse to fob us off with sub-standard fare, as if it’s assumed our critical faculties have taken a fortnight’s break.

I struggle, for example, to understand who the target audience is for GORDON, GINO

AND FRED: CHRISTMAS ROAD TRIP –THREE UNWISE MEN

(ITV, 9pm), in which foodie pals Ramsay, D’Acampo and Sirieix reconvene for a trip to Morocco.

After all, there are countless better food shows, and indeed better travelogues, to be found at the touch of a button.And if any viewer really is desperate to spend an hour observing a trio of middle-aged, bantering blokes being all middle-aged and bantery, a subscription to Amazon Prime will provide access to an infinitely more entertaining example.

So, yes, it’s rubbish.And it’s shows such as this that explain the success of shows such as CLASSIC CHRISTMAS COMEDY MOMENTS (Channel 5, 9pm), a clip thing presented by Stephen Mangan.

There’s nothing particularly surprising here – Morecambe And Wise, Mrs Brown’s Boys,The Good Life,Ab Fab, that kind of thing. It’s just that sometimes it’s more satisfying simply to wallow in nostalgia than to take a punt on the freshly forged alternatives.

That said, we do have Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s challengingly edgy take on A CHRISTMAS CAROL continuing tonight (BBC1, 9.05pm).

And if, like me, you’re such a fan of rom-coms that you’ll forgive Hugh Grant for acting like a luvvie nitwit in real life, then HUGH GRANT: A LIFE ON SCREEN

(BBC2, 9pm) offers a funny, engaging way to spend an hour.

Also, Jeremy Paxman is back with CHRISTMAS UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE (BBC2, 7.30pm),

starting with a clash between Clare College, Cambridge, and Leeds

University, the latter captained by the Rev Richard Coles and the former’s line-up including novelist Marcel Theroux. It goes out nightly, this week and next, which is worth bearing in mind if you’re keen to stop your brain turning to suet.

That’s followed at 8pm, also on

BBC2, by MASTERCHEF: THE PROFESSIONALS REMATCH 2019, where five ex-contestants do battle. One chef, Matt Worswick, is the first contestant to have gone on and won a Michelin star.

And on which series was he champion? None of them. Competing in 2010, he got knocked out in the semi-final.