TV preview, The Great British Bake Off: A superbrand, picking up where Top Gear left off

Averse as I am to cookery shows, I don’t think I can honestly tell you about next week’s television without mentioning the return of The Great British Bake Off. Or “The Cake Olympics”, as perhaps it should be rebranded for the next couple of weeks. Almost everything about the show is, understandably, shrouded in a thick marzipan layer of secrecy, but I can assure you that all the usual ingredients that have made the programme such a phenomenon remain. I hope I am not breaking confidences when I reveal it contains a man who confesses that he has shouted at a pie – a vignette, I think, that says it all.

In becoming one of the BBC’s superbrands, it is sort of picking up where Top Gear left off in terms of its commercial potential as well as critical and audience success. That’s a good thing. So good luck to all concerned, though I will not be putting any buns in any ovens any time soon.

It’s also difficult to describe quite how good the BBC’s new crime drama series One of Us is without giving too much away, so forgive me if I seem to be a bit cagey. I genuinely do not want to spoil your enjoyment of this unusual creation. You see, thing about this one is its novelty, at least so far as this viewer is concerned. It manages to contain all the usual elements of the genre – clever detectives, desperate killer, large element of whodunit, larger still question of whydunnit – but reorders and disorders them in a very intriguing way. There are a couple of plot lines that stray close to the edge of plausibility, but stay just the right side to maintain the dramatic belief and suspense. I don’t often do this, but the words of the press release serve perfectly well at giving a flavour of themes: “Everyone has secrets, but when the lines between right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, become blurred, how do you cope with the lasting and deadly consequences?”. It’s got Juliet Stephenson and Adrian Edmondson in it, is skilfully directed and does indeed claw at your own conscience. Highly recommended, with a tea and cake accompaniment.

One of my guilty secrets – and I cannot be alone here – is enjoyment of ITV’s many and varied clips shows, usually featuring home movies or CCTV footage. Yes, I have watched sneezing cats on YouTube, and I’m proud of it. This latest ITV series, CCTV: Neighbourhood Watching, contains a sequence about a quiet village being plagued by a phantasmagorical car vandal that I’m sure I’ve seen somewhere before, probably on an ITV clips show. Elsewhere you will be confronted by newer and very unpleasant sights that, in case you hadn’t already reached the conclusion, convince you that humanity is capable of some fairly banal evil on its very doorstep. Remember the woman who was caught on camera randomly putting a cat in a bin, and who became a target for national outrage and hatred as a result? Well, let’s just say that she is not alone in her callousness.