PARIS
BBC2, 9pm
NO PLACE LIKE HOME?
ITV1, 8pm
SENSITIVE SKIN BBC2, 10pm
ZUT alors! The presenter of Paris is a Frenchwoman called Sandrine Voillet, and she is - 'ow you say? -a beet of an 'otty (pardonnez-moi, mesdames, je suis un ancien cochon du Chauvin).
Sandrine comes over as a taller, way more elegant Davina McCall with a head full of brains instead of mince.
Or maybe she is a brunette Selina Scott with blood pulsing through her veins, not bile and iced water.
More to the point, art historian Sandrine is a giggly, tomboyish sort who knows her onions when acting as a guide to the French capital (she was a curator at the Louvre).
Mais oui, la belle Sandrine can reel off facts about Parisian architecture and geography, outline the old place's social history and offer a political critique of its famed nooks and less-well-kent crannies.
And she's not afraid to get stuck in to provide the tastes and scents of modern-day Paris, along with its sights. Sacre bleu, you can't help liking a lass who stops to enjoy a mid-morning cream cake.
You also have to admire a woman who conquers her fear of heights to scale the Eiffel Tower. And you can't help but be awed by a burd who ventures down a city's pungent sewers, then, on arrival, expresses disappointment at the absence of rats. Sandrine Voillet et Paris? Ils sont formidables, mes braves!
Vraiment, the same can't be said of No Place Like Home? It seeks to help assorted whinging Poms decide whether to abandon ill-chosen newer lives in the sun and return to equally ill-considered ones they once had in grey, rainy old Blighty.
First up were Mancunians Stan and Shirley, who'd cashed in their chips and moved to Cyprus four years previously. But fiftysomething Stan's not a happy chappy now. Oh, no.
There were so many heinous things about which he found cause to complain. In Cyprus, see, the locals mend the roads and then - you're not going to believe this! - they leave earthen spoil-heaps lying about in the undergrowth. Stan had been 20-odd years in the building trade himself and he'd never seen anything so shocking (at this statement, I shouted: "Aye, right, Stan!" at my TV screen).
And Cypriots are the worst car-drivers in Europe. It was official, Stan told us, because he'd read it in the paper (an English-language one printed in far-away London, as if you needed to ask).
And that seemed to be the sum total of Stan's discontent with Cyprus, really. Ooh, I forgot: Stan hated the way local drivers tend to park half on and half off the pavement.
As for Shirley, she liked Cyprus. She'd found the locals friendly. She liked the local food produce. She liked their hillside villa with its pool. She liked the Cypriot rate of tax (5%).
Stan and Shirley's 10-year-old son, Matthew, liked Cyprus, and the pool, and his school. He enjoyed being able to play various sports all year round - and he enjoyed being popular with his classmates.
So, knowing all this, Stan dragged Matthew and Shirley back to Manchester, and I switched off the TV with a roar of: "Stan, man! It ain't where you've been, it's where you're at!"
Returning for its second series, Sensitive Skin is a bold, grown-up drama about a group of ultra- privileged sixtysomething London bohemians that lumbers itself with the description "comedy". What's bold about Sensitive Skin is that its comedy isn't laugh-out-loud funny.
It is, however, very satisfying to behold, and intelligent and acutely observed, while its core cast - Joanna Lumley, Nicholas Jones, Maggie Steed - are deft and admirably understated. And (d'accord!) sensitive.
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