New viewers begin here: even if you know nothing of the previous five series of Waterloo Road, you could start to enjoy the drama set in a failing comprehensive in Greater Manchester with the opener to series six, as the writers have rather winningly taken the precaution of barely mentioning anything that went on in previous years - not even the teen suicide pact that ended series five.

Words such as horror, grotesque, shocking and bizarre are fired at us before the title has even appeared on screen: clearly this documentary is set on living down to its sensationalist title. One bleak sunless day in May 2008, Swedish twins Sabina and Ursula Eriksson ran into traffic on the M6. Both miraculously escaped with their lives but then turned on the police officers trying to help them. With a lack of subtlety and restraint typical of this kind of schedule-filler, director Jim Nally shows us the footage of Sabina being thrown off the bonnet of a car at least twice more, slowing it down, freeze-framing it, and then just flashing up fragments of it - hammering home the kind of imagery which will have stuck in the mind of any sensitive viewer anyway.

We know we’re in cut-price Sex and the City territory when it’s not iPhones that are getting top product placement billing but Clearblue pregnancy tests. A box was held aloft between the trembling fingers of Jess as the camera slowly caressed its glistening cellophane surface for a lingering close-up.

Wasn't The Deep the title of a 1970s movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte? Something about sunken treasure and a stash of morphine off the coast of Bermuda. I have a hunch it may have been complete twaddle. No less preposterous is this five-part subaqueous saga from the BBC, in which a team of marine scientists take their research submarine, the Orpheus, into frozen Arctic waters to investigate the catastrophic wreck of another sub, the Hermes.

Rupert Everett knows who he is: he is English, he’s a toff and he’s a poof, thank you very much. And that’s just about all you need to know to tell you that, as a breed, they’re pretty damned sure of themselves, these English toffs, poofs or not. But he’s also a pretty memorable actor. Yes, really. Let me try to convince you. I once saw him – and this must have been just before Another Country hit the big screen, for his name didn’t mean much to me then  – on stage in Webster’s The White Devil.

There was a risk that this new take on the indestructible sleuth of Baker Street might be smothered at birth by a dust-storm of pre-publicity, with coverage stretching from the tabloids to Andrew Marr (who really seems to believe he's an arts correspondent, and not just Alfred E Neuman's long-lost twin brother).

The fact that we humans are, technically speaking, bad liars proves that we are instinctively moral creatures (rather than getting our morals from our god or our parents) and that lying is therefore, evolutionarily speaking, probably a bad idea. You can get away with saying you were caught in traffic, rather than admitting you were in the pub, but a polygraph will pick up on changes in blood pressure, pulse and respiration - those indicators of anxiety you’d rather not be feeling - and your goose will be cooked. But imagine how much more difficult it would be if the lie you were telling had just been given to you on a card, and you had to elaborate on it, on the spot, in response to quick-fire questioning.

JasperRees Not long now till @SweetingAdam and I start tweeting our live Friday Night @Wossy review here. 10.35 sharp.

SweetingAdam @JasperRees you could cut the atmosphere with a rolling pin

JasperRees I won't miss those bubbles. Or that music. It's sort of a bit rubbish

JasperRees BTW We are now reviewing Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, live on Twitter. He's said he's not going to cry

JasperRees Are you there, @SweetingAdam? I'm doing this on my tod. (My daughter: 'Are they all gay?' She's 17)

SweetingAdam Are the 4 Poofs employable in a post-Woss world?

JasperRees I believe they charge a mint for personal appearances. No doubt they're upping sticks for ITV1 too.

JasperRees Not long now till @SweetingAdam and I start tweeting our live Friday Night @Wossy review here. 10.35 sharp.

SweetingAdam @JasperRees you could cut the atmosphere with a rolling pin

JasperRees I won't miss those bubbles. Or that music. It's sort of a bit rubbish

JasperRees BTW We are now reviewing Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, live on Twitter. He's said he's not going to cry

JasperRees Are you there, @SweetingAdam? I'm doing this on my tod. (My daughter: 'Are they all gay?' She's 17)

SweetingAdam Are the 4 Poofs employable in a post-Woss world?

JasperRees I believe they charge a mint for personal appearances. No doubt they're upping sticks for ITV1 too.

There was a gnawing suspicion that The Silence wouldn’t amount to much, since it was dumped in a four-night splurge in the middle of the mid-summer doldrums, and even the normally docile Radio Times had decided to stamp its foot and pick holes in it. One’s apprehension proved ill-founded, however. It turned out to be taut, tense, well acted and smartly written, and carried enough pace to lift it over the more credulity-stretching passages.