Fast cars, fast girls and even faster food

Fast cars, fast girls and even faster food

Top Gear, BBC2

The Trouble With Girls, BBC2

Economy Gastronomy, BBC2

This year has seen the demise of such venerable TV institutions as Patrick "The Prisoner" McGoohan, Ricardo "Fantasy Island" Montalban, Wendy "Pauline Fowler" Richard and Mollie "Mrs Slocombe" Sugden, not to mention the marriage of Peter and Katie "ITV2" Andre.

Admittedly the latter only felt as if it had lasted for ever, such a part of the cultural warp, weft and TV schedules had the happy couple become (and verily there was sweet and smiley Peter, on The One Show sofa last Thursday, with his own camera crew filming The One Show crew filming his appearance). But as we live in such a terrifyingly speedy, fluffy, lightweight, disposable world, I think three years of marriage (or whatever blink-and-you'll-miss-it-timeframe it actually was) is probably the new 10 years of marriage. Because we all know that marriages between couples who seem quite similar and well-matched on the surface but who have numerous significant personality differences beneath can be incredibly tricky things to make work, can't they? But (only very mildly satirically) I digress.

Anyway, the important point I was intending to make was that last week saw the end of another good thing which enhances all our lives, when the 13th (unlucky-for-some-but-apparently-not-them) series of Top Gear breathed its last, and Clarkson, J gave a frankly moving elegy to the era of the supercar, while sitting in an Aston Martin Vantage that was also moving. And I think you probably did see what I did there.

I felt a little bit sniffly, frankly - possibly even snivelly. Obviously I would have preferred this to have been the onset of swine flu instead of emotional eye-related moistness about a car, but personally it's been a very emotional week, what with celebrating 10 years as TV critic of the Observer (yes, August 1999. I'm still on a six-month trial) by cracking open a bottle of Tesco own-brand beer alone in front of the Proms, and turning the violins up to 11.

Anyway, it was a grand final episode of TG, what with the hilarious how-to-make-a-VW-ad segment, and the one in which they revealed that the Stig is in fact a bipolar speed-freak former editor of a national daily newspaper (Didn't you see that bit? Check it out on iPlayer ... Nope, it won't be there either!). And the piece where Jay Leno revealed he has, like, a zillionbillion cars, so it'll be all round to Jay's for a go in the Vantage then.

And then there was that hilariously funny news story about soppy little electric cars being chucked into the waterways of Amsterdam by drunken revellers. Yes, according to Clarkson, J, it only takes four people to pick up a G-Wiz and throw it into a canal, but (he reminded us, as if we needed reminding) this is something one really ought not to do under any circumstances, however tempting it may be.

Anyway, yes, Top Gear was, without the proverbial shadow, my favourite programme of last week, and conceivably of my entire TV critiquing lifetime. It made me giggle and smile and cry a bit, and frankly what more do you expect from an hour spent in front of a telly in August?

Needless to say, I was tremendously buoyed, and carried on searching for potential fixes of feelgood TV, which clearly ruled out the usual police procedurals, sci-fi trash, reality shows or anything featuring blood, soap or size zero teens, never mind tearful miserydocs. After establishing that, in a week when the kids were actually away, this would effectively leave me in front of CBeebies when I should theoretically be running riot with my PIN on Sky, I decided to watch The Trouble With Girls (BBC2), which I knew would be both worthy and depressing because - pass the bottle of WKD and hit me with those stats - since 2003 there has been a dementedly vast 40 per cent rise in crimes committed by young women. Yes, I know, that doesn't even include the stats for fortysomethings randomly hurling electric cars into canals.

It was depressing but it could have been worse. Though of the old fly-on-the-wall non-interventionist school of documentary-making - rather than, say, a BBC3 series called "Rehab!" in which young female binge-drinkers go on a crash-recovery (I'd say it's got legs, albeit very very skinny, wobbly ones) - the whole miserable business of watching 17-year-old Abbie from York and 20-year-old Shona from Doncaster systematically destroy their lives with what would, in a different context, have been admirably focused determination was leavened by the sweetness and (infuriatingly) smartness these two girls did their level best to hide, but failed.

However, viewers willing them to sort their lives out doesn't mean they will. The odds are stacked against them. This week's second and final part won't, I'll hazard, feature a guest appearance from Amy Winehouse empathising with Abbie and Shona about court appearances.

But any lurking miserablism was entirely banished by my second-favourite programme of the week, BBC2's Economy Gastronomy, which could have been unwatchably awful and patronising and sent prickles of embarrassment creeping down my spine as cheery chefs Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett coached hard-working parents-of-three young boys, Mr and Mrs England from Derbyshire, who lived on ready meals and takeaways, how to shop for food and what to do with it next, while also saving them 90 quid a week.

But in fact it was delightful, not least because the Englands weren't scummy chavtrash, merely a couple who, somehow, had failed to learn how to cook.

Thus, the feelgood moral of the story - alongside McEvedy's delicious recipes for artichoke and lardon-loaded macaroni cheese (bye-bye arteries) - is probably for the nation to stop panicking about whether 25 per cent of 11-year-olds (and indeed 45-year-olds) aren't able to spell velociraptor and bring back old-fashioned Home Ec, if only so that the little Billy Englands of the future won't have to wait until they are nine before they get to taste mum's (and dad's) home-cooking for the very first time.

So it's been an emotional week: fast cars, fast girls and faster food; a week of long, slow goodbyes, of elegies for the Good Old Days and poignant remembrances of petrol engines past.And don't blame me if your G-Wiz gets wet - blame Clarkson.

Meanwhile in the face of our impending energy crisis, I'll definitely be doing my bit. I promise to stop leaving the telly on standby.

A winning format
The great leveller

How the Other Half Live (C4) breaks down barriers between haves and have-nots even more than its production stablemate, The Secret Millionaire

When we first met Shaun and Michaela O'Dwyer they were struggling to get by on Shaun's bus-driving wage and fend off the bailiffs. By the end the family had had a Spanish holiday, paid off their debts, bought a new washer-dryer and laptop, had a partition wall installed to create another bedroom and been given a £7,000 trust fund for their kids. Though it was impossible not to wish everybody involved the very best (the four children's friendship was particularly touching), it was entirely possible to hope Michaela O'Dwyer's dream of "selling home-made skin creams on the internet" could be nipped in the bud painlessly but PDQ.