Being N-Dubz, Channel 4

Can you get past the withering voiceovers and enjoy this surprisingly interesting pop doc?

Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer of North London pop phenomenon N-Dubz – or, if you prefer, Tula Constavlos, her cousin Dino Constavlos and their schoolfriend Richard Rawson – are easy to mock, and Channel 4 know it. The first episode of this showbiz slice-of-life documentary about the ebullient trio is so slathered with the kind of hideously knowing upper-middle-class arched-eybrow voiceover that characterises the whole of the channel's T4 youth programming strand that you have to wonder if they actually credit the viewer with the ability to form an opinion at all.

Sean Lock, touring

Lockipedia: laid-back comic delivers surreal spin on everyday things

Sean Lock, as well as being an acclaimed stand-up for many years, has also written for other comics, including Bill Bailey, Lee Evans and Mark Lamarr, and his profile has risen hugely through his stints as team captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats on Channel 4 and regular guest appearances on other panel shows, including QI and Mock the Week. His fans, including me, recall with fondness his sitcom 15 Storeys High, which ran for two series on BBC TV (and which was developed from the equally funny Radio 4 show Sean Lock’s 15 Minutes of Misery).

Cutting Edge: Too Poor for Posh School?, Channel 4

Poor title conceals posh documentary

OK, let’s flop it out into the open. Let’s show the cards I was dealt way back when. Those boaters you saw at the start of Cutting Edge's Too Poor for Posh School? I may well, in another lifetime, blameless aeons in the netherworld of one’s past, have been seen wandering along a high street on a hill north-west of London underneath one of those. The tailcoats worn by pews full of adolescents on Sundays? Yep. Once upon a time that was oneself. (Thank God they didn’t show the top hats we had to wear as monitors.) My name is Jasper and I am an Old Harrovian.

Women, BBC Four / Dispatches - Cameron Uncovered, C4

A revealing probe into feminism, a less-exposing undressing for Dave

You don't have to be female to wonder where the feminist revolution went.  You only have to look at the not-very-private lives of footballers and the gaggles of wannabe WAGs flinging themselves in their path, or the way female pop stars seem to relish the requirement to dress up (or down) like porno queens, to wonder if it isn't high time somebody wrote an update of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics.

The Bible: A History: The Bash

It could so easily have been just another bit of God-slot box-ticking. But The Bible: A History, in which Channel 4 has invited guest presenters to mull over some aspect of the Good Book, has been exciting a lot of comment from viewers. Summoning Gerry Adams to present a film about the life of Christ won't have done anything to dampen audience ardour. Channel 4 have responded by organising a public discussion. It takes place at the British Library next week on Wednesday 3 March at 6.30pm. Roger Bolton chairs, and the panel consists of three of The Bible's presenters - historian Tom Holland, journalist Rageh Omaar and theologian Robert Beckford. For some reason the Sinn Fein president has not accepted the invitation which was doubtless issued. For more information visit the Channel 4 TV Show blog.









The Bible: A History, Channel 4

Gerry Adams is 'sometimes in tune with the Jesus message. Sometimes not'

For six years from 1988, when Sinn Fein was banned from direct broadcasting, Gerry Adams could be seen on television, but not heard. Instead, actors would read his words while his lips soundlessly moved. What would the architects of that ban have said if they’d been told that one day the political face of the Provisional IRA would be given an hour on television to make a programme about Christ? "Jesus wept?" "He’s got a bloody cheek?"

Tower Block of Commons, Channel 4

MPs in out-of-touch shock

What do our elected representatives in Westminster know? Apart from, clearly, how to fill in an expenses claim form. You can file all the usual complaints about Tower Block of Commons, a series in which MPs take up residence in sink estates. It uses the tired old Wife Swap format of sadistically throwing its subjects in at the deep end to watch them sink or swim. The editing is visibly manipulative. After every commercial break it recaps the entire story for its goldfish audience. And that title is, as per, naff.

Mo, Channel 4

Human drama outshines political shenanigans in Mo Mowlam biopic

It was a bit like the Ghost of Labour Past at Channel 4’s screening of this biopic of Mo Mowlam at BAFTA a couple of weeks ago. A cohort of party veterans turned out, including Charles Clarke, Neil Kinnock and Adam Ingram (a close ally of Mowlam’s and played by Gary Lewis in the film). There was even a brief introductory talk by "Batty" Hattie Harman, recalling how she first met Mowlam at Westminster. What a thrill that must have been for Mo.

Progress, Union Theatre

Doug Lucie’s 1984 satire on class and sex stands up well a generation later

Sexual politics has always been fertile (oops) ground for comedy, and Doug Lucie’s vigorous satire — whose 1984 premiere starred Lindsay Duncan, David Bamber and Kevin Elyot — is here given a revival on the London fringe. We are in Kilburn during the Thatcher era, and the local trendy lefties have turned inward. As thirtysomething Will and his wife Ronee decide to experiment with radical sexual politics, the men’s group that he hosts explores, often hilariously, the subject of sexism and what it might mean to be a New Man.

Confessions of a Traffic Warden, C4

They come over here, ticket our cars...

Who’d be a traffic warden, eh? The answer, it would seem, is any number of immigrants willing to be paid £7 an hour to be verbally abused, physically attacked and generally despised by the great British public. And Olly Lambert, writer-director of Channel 4’s well-made and informative Cutting Edge documentary, Confessions of a Traffic Warden, says that although his original intention was to find out about the people beneath the uniforms, what he actually discovered was the hair-trigger vileness of Londoners beneath a badly scuffed veneer of civilised behaviour.