It’s all in the timing. Here was David Baddiel beginning a stand-up turn at a gig in Finchley. A Holocaust survivor gets to heaven, and God asks for a Holocaust joke. God says that his joke isn't funny, and the survivor replies “Well, I guess you had to be there.” Baddiel believes there is nothing that is impervious to a joke.

The nation’s public attics – museums – hold a huge jumble of objects collected and used in all sorts of ways to tell us stories of past and present.

We hear plenty of debate about climate change and its disastrous potential, but the ballooning growth of the world’s population may be the most critical issue facing humankind. Chris Packham thinks so (“it’s undeniably the elephant in the room,” he says, though lack of elephants is one of its many alarming symptoms) and in this documentary for BBC Two he criss-crossed the planet to show us the evidence.

Series about fishing have become a durable mini-genre, including the likes of Deadliest Catch and Saltwater Heroes. However, this new six-parter on BBC Two brings us much closer to home than Alaska or Tasmania, and probes into the lives of the fishing families of the Cornish village of Mevagissey.

This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father can quite remember. He felt (he told us) that it was a kind of family tradition as about 800 of his own children have been born there since.

Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu. Tonight’s BBC Two programme had a rather theatrical premise: a chef recreating the complete dining experience (menu, team, decor, diners) from a pivotal year in their restaurant’s history.

All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think?

Happily, Joe Barton’s tinglingly original thriller (BBC Two) finished as smartly as it began, not by any humdrum tying-up of loose ends but by giving free rein to the story’s ambiguities and impossible choices. If indeed they really were choices.

“Talking cures and exploring the darkness of men’s souls – are you sure this is a career for a gentleman?” This is Vienna, 1906. Freud is exerting an influence, to the disapproval of many, including the father of cool-as-a-cucumber Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard).

“He was dying slowly. We just made it quick.” This is sharp-faced, menacing Max (Mark Bonnar: Catastrophe, Unforgotten, Line of Duty) to his sensitive brother Jake (Jamie Sives: Chernobyl, Game of Thrones, The James Plays). Jake is driving Max’s car on their way back from a wedding in Fife – Max is beside him, swigging champagne - and accidentally runs into and kills an old man in an Edinburgh suburb. Well, the old guy did have terminal pancreatic cancer, so that makes it OK, doesn’t it?