Learn the secret of a happy life from the human Winnie the Pooh

We all have our feelgood favourites, the movies and TV boxsets we turn to when we need cheering up. Mine are a Matter Of life and Death with the wonderful David Niven and the surreal Irish sitcom Father Ted.

Marvellous (BBC2) will be going on the shelf beside them.

an hour-and-a-half spent watching that was as good as a week’s holiday: refreshing, uplifting and satisfying, like a deep clean for a jaded soul.

even before broadcast, critics who had seen this tale of a simplehearted man who achieves all his extraordinary ambitions were comparing it with Forrest Gump, the Oscar-winning 1994 film that starred Tom Hanks as an innocent with a grandstand view of history as it unfolds.

But this was so much better. Instead of being mawkish, it was laced with sharp humour, like a squeeze of lemon. Furthermore, it was a true story.

Toby Jones played Neil Baldwin, a sort of human Winnie the Pooh: he might have been ‘a bear of little brain’, but he won the world over with the joyous force of his personality.

Where others saw his difficulties, Neil recognised only opportunities. His philosophy was simple: ‘ I’m nice to people and if they are not nice to me, there are other people who are.’

like everything about this drama, written by Peter Bowker, there were surprising depths to that line. Jones spoke it the way he delivered much of his dialogue — patiently, kindly, as if explaining the world to a child.

at first it seemed practical, but sadly naive: there are so many people in the world who are not nice.

and then the gentle challenge inherent in the words became visible. Would you, would I, be nice to dear, vulnerable Neil? Of course we would, or shame on us otherwise.

and that invited a question: if everyone can be nice to Neil, why can’t we all be nicer to each other?

Not for the only time in the story, what appeared at first to be a limited outlook turned out to contain profound insights.

Because Neil adored the Burt lancaster film Trapeze — his own feelgood treat, which he watched endlessly — he joined a circus and became Nello the clown; because his mother was a devout Christian, he befriended bishops and archbishops; and because he was a fanatical Stoke City supporter, he became the club’s kitman and unofficial mascot.

It was as though Neil could have whatever he required, whether he was asking a single stranger or the whole world.

He was never afraid to ask anyone, though he placed special trust in God and the people who worked for Him. ‘He does seem to view the church as being some kind of ecclesiastical aa,’ sighed a vicar, summoned from Staffordshire to Scotland to be Neil’s taxi service.

So many touches in this one-off drama promise to make it a fund of delight for repeated viewing.

There were the cameos by Neil’s real-life pals, including Match of the Day’s Gary lineker and f ormer Stoke manager lou Macari. There was the ukulele choir, belting out Stoke’s anthem, Delilah, and other quirky hits. The real Neil’s appearances, butting in to comment on the action or correct the f acts, became a running joke.

above all, there was his simple ethos: ‘I’ve always wanted to be happy, so I decided to be.’ Neil Baldwin is part clown, part Dalai lama.

Of course, however perfect your faith and pure your heart, some things are beyond the realm of physical possibility. Never Teach Your Wife To Drive (C5) focused on one of them: nothing is more certain to provoke a divorce than driving lessons from a spouse.

This new series started off as a gleeful bit of sexism, with an anxious hubby clutching at his face as his stressed- out missus went screaming over speed bumps or parked in hedges.

But the couples were soon playing up to the cameras so blatantly that none of it was convincing.

By the time one woman had reversed on to the pavement with the handbrake on, I was muttering: ‘ Oh, come on! You’re doing that on purpose.’

Sad how quickly we become cynical again.