I view flash City boys and their bonus millions much as David Attenborough might examine a lemming or a coelacanth — as another species, whose habits I shall never share. So I resisted the temptation to watch them in ITV1’s Excess in the City, squandering their gains on Rolexes, coke and Porsches, tossed them back in the briny and concentrated instead on a variety of middle-class stupidity, cupidity and excess that’s closer to home: The Madness of Modern Families (BBC Two).

This formulaic but promising spin-off series features Grumpy Old Mums and Dads, locked in the competitive parenthood trap. It started softly with birthday parties. Did anyone ever find these fun? I recoil, remembering rough games of Musical Chairs and slimy trifle. But my tenth birthday was brilliant: we were packed off to see Davy Crockett at the Odeon. And with my own children, we got into a mild spiral of hiring a skating rink or a bowling alley.

But for 21st-century parents, apparently, it’s got to be the Telecom Tower or the Albert Hall, with a stretch limo to take the whole class along, and a boa constrictor as entertainer. Birthdays are “the annual speech day of parenting, to prove what a fabulous parent you are”. What rubbish, but what hell anyway. You can’t fob the brats off with Bozo the clown. Some brats pretend to have peanut allergies, and mime cardiac arrest. You must invite the parents too, and they get too sloshed to drive their brats home. And forget a slice of cake and a balloon: “a goody bag is the window on the soul of humanity”. (Conversely, jelly is still obligatory, as it’s the only time anyone ever gets to eat the stuff.)

Since all these gripes were self-inflicted, they induced only mocking laughter. But note: the programme’s signature sequence is a merry-go-round. Once you’re a parent, it says, you can’t get off the carousel. And it never stops: round and round you go, until you’re buying them cars and paying their mortgages and they’re still dressing up in daft wigs and costumes and going to blessed 30th birthday parties . . .

Dr Alice Roberts: Don’t Die Young (BBC Two) invites the question: why not, eh? If only a programme could persuade us that there is more in store, as an alternative to death, than three more catatonic years in the geriatric ward. Oops, sorry, ssshh. We must listen to Dr Roberts, who will show us how to look after our vital organs and prolong our health. Part one was on kidneys. Where are they? Many people don’t know, so they might have learnt something from Dr Alice’s biology lesson.

A rugger player pees less when he doesn’t drink enough water after sweating kilos. Dr Alice’s blood sugar rose after eating a Danish and a slice of cheesecake. There are 750,000 people walking around not knowing they have diabetes. We saw a kidney transplant in closeup, calcified arteries etc. Alice tasted a broccoli smoothie, grimaced and said, “It’s horrible.” All a bit ho-hum. Query: is there any evidence that anyone takes any notice at all of food/health programmes?

Fergus Drennan, The Roadkill Chef (BBC Three), says we’d feel healthier if we scraped up a slaughtered squirrel (tastes like baby lamb) from the road and ate it instead of supermarket rubbish. Hedgehogs are tasty, too, but are usually squashed too flat. He found a gastro-pub chef in Sandwich (or was it a sandwich chef in a gastro-pub) who had served kangaroo, bison, zebra and camel, so was not fazed by cooking badger, rabbit, seaweed and puffball for Fergus’s free feast. Fergus’s point was quickly made; stretched to one hour, there was more time to marinade one’s scepticism. This will never catch on.

Paddy McGuinness began presenting Raiders of the Lost Archive (ITV1) by emerging from a flushing lavatory. This always indicates “See? I’m a lad, I am”, which he confirmed by saying: “I’ve bin sloggin’ me a**e off, finding these.” But well done Paddy, because archives are worth sloggin’ for. It is deplorable that television folk had so little sense of history, or consideration for posterity, that most programmes were taped over or discarded before someone noticed, in the mid-1970s.

The footage unearthed from the vaults last night showed Michael Parkinson undertaking various unlikely tasks. But like Before They Were Famous, it’s a limited formula. Parky, like anyone leafing through a photo album and seeing the younger self, can’t say more than “Ow amazing to find that!” He could hardly say, “By goom I was ’andsome in them days”. Or even, “how impressive I was, before I started simpering and fawning to celebs”.

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