Rule No 1: If you want a free house, first get yourself a baby

Get A House For Free Utopia: In Search Of The Dream

Everyone on telly last night seemed to be filled with such good intentions, and you know where those can lead — straight to hell. The survivalists in the second episode of eden, a Channel 4 reality documentary filmed in a self-sufficient camp on the remote Scottish coast, were still proclaim-ing their determination to build a better world. They did this by acting like psychotic cavemen, off their heads on homebrew.

By the end of the hour, the men had driven all but three of the women out with constant vile bullying. The ones who clung on appeared to have strong evidence on tape of sexual harassment and even assault.

It’s jaw- dropping to watch, though the constant foul language becomes a grind.

Businessman Marco robinson’s good intentions, in Get A House For Free (C4), seemed much better placed to change lives for the good, even if his generosity could only help a handful.

The 48-year- old businessman reckons he is worth £25 million, thanks to a property empire and restaurant chain, and wanted to give some of his fortune away.

To do this, he decided to buy a flat for a stranger. The problem was deciding which stranger.

Within two weeks, 8,000 people had applied. These were whittled down to just three — we didn’t see how, but the candidates appeared to be chosen to represent different aspects of the housing crisis.

There was call handler Jo, whose disability threatened her job and the roof over her head; teacher Mahmoud, a refugee with his teenage sons from the war in Syria; and Holly, an 18-year- old single mum with a baby daughter. From the moment Marco explained that he was inspired to make this grand gesture by his mother, who sacrificed everything to bring him up alone, it was obvious who was going to emerge with the keys to the flat. Sorry Jo, sorry Mahmoud . . . you should have brought a baby with you.

But because they were genuinely in need, too, Marco could hardly abandon them. His solution was to give Jo £15,000 as a deposit on her own home, and a rent-free flat to Mahmoud while he fought his case for asylum.

All this kindness is bound to boost employment, too, by creating work for a team of secretaries to handle all the begging letters that are about to overwhelm Marco’s offices.

Philosophers might debate dryly whether this really was the best use of nearly 150 grand.

Wouldn’t it be better, they might argue, to plough that money into vaccines that could protect thousands of children in the developing world from polio and malaria? But those philosophers were all busy with art historian Professor richard Clay in Utopia: In Search Of the Dream (BBC4), trying to work out why the world wasn’t a perfect wonderland of equal rights and shared wealth.

From the moment the Prof began his search, in a rose garden, we sensed he wasn’t exactly a realist. He visited a football ground, looking for inspiration in the beautiful game, and a school, in the hope childish idealism would open the doors of his perception.

one little girl helpfully drew a planet shaped like a flower, where celebrities lived on the coloured petals. Karl Marx never thought of that.

The quest ended in Hollywood, at the home of actress nichelle nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhuru in Star Trek. Here, declared the Prof, was a true example of Utopia, proof that we can all live in harmony . . . aboard the Starship enterprise.

Well, his intentions were good.