This week is the start of ITV1’s Austen season, kicking off with Mansfield Park. Mansfield Parkis probably the most high-profile item — ITV1 would presume that’s because it has bagged Billie Piper and Michelle Ryan, née Zoe Slater from EastEnders, corseting around a mansion with a bit of big budget wobbliecam-o-vision. Of course, the real reason for its prominence is that these days, ITV1 doing anything “classy” has curiosity value — a bit like catsthatlooklikehitler. com, but with ramifications across the entire broadcasting sector.

You can see what the makers tried to do with Mansfield Park. Essentially — with a plot of “Who’s going to shag whom?” — Mansfield Park is much like the average episode of Hollyoaks. Given this, the thinking clearly went, attracting a young audience should be a doddle: they’ve got to do all this stuff for their GCSEs anyway, so with a couple of hot young actresses in the big roles, you should be looking at a crossover before you can say “Mr D’Arcy”.

Alas, however, ITV1 overlooked one gigantic — indeed, one might almost call it insurmountable — problem with the whole project. This drama, with which they hope to capture a teenage audience, has as its main protagonist Fanny Price. Now, I am 31 years old. I can’t, in all honesty, say I have a terribly sophisticated sense of humour, but I am still, I would wager, on far less of an innuendo hair-trigger than most adolescents. What, then, are they — poor, hormone-drunk creatures — to make of the following pieces of dialogue? “Fanny is very young.” “Fanny — so warm and affectionate.” “Help me, Fanny! Guide me!” “Fanny, where are you! I need you!”

I fear those less mature than me might not make it to the end, where Mr Bertram finally kisses Piper’s Fanny in the garden.

From the apogee of Regency womanhood to the apogee of 21st century womanhood, with Ulrika: Am I A Sex Addict?Although one’s first reaction to a show like this would most likely be an extended boggle — Ulrika Jonsson is going to seek advice on her possible sex addiction in front of an audience of millions? Is Celebrity Nervous Seizures really so far away now? — this kind of show is, although it seems unlikely, benign.

Of course, it’s often hard to remember this as the prurient voiceover — “Ulrika starts to break down now” — and schlocky direction cart Ulrika from therapist to therapist, all the while clearly praying that Ulrika will, at some point, shout “STAN COLLYMORE USED TO DO ME OVER SOME BINS!”, and then lie on the floor, weeping.

But we have to remember — all human beings are weak. We’re all faulty. We’re all poorly motivated, superstitious and obtuse, getting through each day by doing frankly stupid things — smoking cancer, mainlining cheese, watching Lewis. Ultimately, discussion about any problem is a help. For example: did you know that if you ever walk in on your parents having sex, you have an increased likelihood of becoming a sex addict? Blimey — after the “Mummy and Daddy are just tickling each other” incident in 1986, no wonder I’ve been letting Stan Collymore do me over these bins.

Still, the fact remains that, if you’re to have quality time in front of the television this week, you must head for Channel 4’s The Yellow House, a dramatisation of the nine weeks that Paul Gauguin spent with Vincent Van Gogh in their “Studio of the South”, a dump with a single saucepan in a one-whore town.

Obviously, a drama such as this could go many ways — and in the slightly shaky first ten minutes, there is the ever-present biopic danger that Van Gogh might suddenly shout F*** it, I’m off to paint Sunflowers!” over a slow fade-up of Starry Starry Night.

But you can’t argue with class and, after the first ad-break, both the script and John “Best Actor of his Generation”? Simm as Van Gogh turn in finely tuned, intense, if factually incorrect ( see Art Critic Bloke, page 34) portrait of their relationship.

In the end, Gauguin (John Lynch, good moustache) “steals” Van Gogh’s “yellow skies and blue trees”, Van Gogh takes the razor to his ear, and Gauguin decides to bottle it back to Paris. Their nine-week stay in the Yellow House produced more than 40 masterpieces.

It does, all things told, put Noel Gallagher and Meg Mathews’s tenure at “Supernova Heights” into sharp relief.

Mansfield Park, Sun, ITV1, 9pm; Ulrika: Am I a Sex Addict, Tues, C4, 9pm; The Yellow House, Thur, C4, 9pm. TV&Radio starts on page 31

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