There’s a problem with rutting and rucking on the box: not enough sex and violence. Nothing like enough. Violence I care less about. TV bundles were always childishly theatrical – a lot of windmilling; Rada Fight Club; ballet with grunts – but now we see virtually none. Doctor Who is probably the most aggressive programme on terrestrial TV. It’s the sex I miss. There used to be lots of sex. Well, not lots, but sexy sex. And slowly, incrementally, like strip poker in reverse, it’s all been humped under the carpet, for an oddly contrary mix of reasons – a born-again prudery from unrepresentative religious pressure groups and feminist producers, editors and performers.

You may well be saying: “What on earth’s he on about? Has he not seen Channel 4 before the watershed recently? There’s nothing but sex on the box. I’m up to here with it.” Admittedly, there’s plenty of squeamish prurience dressed up as inquiry and public service; lots of series about deformed genitals, bestiality, penis plastic surgery, ladyboys, 40-year-old virgins and sex education for toddlers. There are whole shows devoted to swearing, such as Ramsay, Ross and Norton. It’s what you get when you have a prescriptive, self-censoring culture – the natural urge to merge gets distorted into a fascination with the bizarre and disgusting.

What I’m missing is dramas in which attractive people have sex for fun because it’s part of their lives, but then, of course, that’s far more subversive than a reality show about amateur Brazilian waxing. And now comes Talk to Me (Sunday, ITV1), a drama about a late-night-radio phone-in host who talks about sex. He doesn’t just talk about it: it’s sort of Frasier without the wit meets Play Misty for Me without the Clint. Instead, we’ve got that front-desk bloke from Hotel Babylon, Max Beesley, who may be the housewife’s choice as the new Robson Green, but really doesn’t do that much for me. Anyway, he’s not aimed at me, thank goodness.

The priapic thrust of this drama is that your man is going to bed everything that has the equipment to lactate, including his best friend’s missus. The suspense isn’t really over who, but when. Anyway, they gave away the plot in the advertising tease that’s been plastered all over buses and newspapers. The trouble with all lotharios is that, while they behave like selfish, cruel, macho bastards, we still have to find them attractive and charming enough to care what happens to them. It’s a big ask from a part, and an actor. In this case, neither makes it beyond the bastard bit.

Yet, for all its shortcomings, its longcomings and its interrupted comings, Talk to Me had a bawdy braggadocio. It was the sex that gripped. Finally, people were doing it without having to go to a doctor or a self-help group, without having to be interviewed in silhouette afterwards. This was drama with a pulse that occasionally raced. It’s funny, though, what postfeminist actresses will agree to when the beast with two backs is in the frame. The BF’s wife, in this case, finally succumbed not so finally, and not so much succumbed as leapt. There’s not a lot of edge-of-the-seat, will-they-won’t-they about Talk to Me. After all the various comings, Don Giovannis only ever go one way.

An actor who can do both naughty and nice in a single shot is James Nesbitt. He has so much sleepy-eyed, crooked-smiled, slow-burn charm that if you stuck a blue beret on him, he could be a one-man peace-keeping force. But he also has that touch of steely amorality; a grinning viciousness and dramatic instinct for self-preservation. His whole, permanently adolescent life might well have been preparing him to play Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll (Saturday, BBC1), a modern reworking of Stevenson’s astonishingly perceptive psychiatric horror story, is rather good, or, like the curate’s egg, good in some parts and bad in others. It’s a neat and dangerous retelling, made plausible mainly because Nesbitt is so completely believable as both characters. Generally, Mr Hyde is a grotesque caricature, all stuck-on hair and prosthetics, but Nesbitt needs only the addition of darkened eyeballs to make a transformation that is profound and terrifying.

The problem with the story is that, while the doctor is the hero, and gallantly fights his dark alter ego, he is in truth a bit of a prissy goody-goody. It’s Mr Hyde who’s the dramatically interesting one, the one we’d rather watch, but Nesbitt renders each with a clever residual trace of the other. I suspect the Irish accent has a lot to do with the success of his characterisation. It is a Jekyll-and-Hyde voice. He’s blarney and craic and Terry Wogan, but also the voice from behind the balaclava, the code-word warning and sectarian bile. It would be hard to imagine Dr Jekyll as a Brummie.

Which leads me, kicking and screaming, to Lenny Henry. There were two programmes last week ominously touted as entertainment whose titles raised questions. Lenny’s Britain (Tuesday, BBC1) was, we were told, a search to find out what made the nation laugh. Why ask Lenny Henry, the nation replied with a straight face. The thing I’ve always liked best about Henry is his ability to amuse himself so much. He’s permanently got himself in stitches and is a wonderful role model for kids. They’re always saying children don’t know how to make their own fun these days with something simple and homemade, and here’s Lenny – the simplest thing keeps him chortling for hours. Lenny’s Britain was about as funny as Lenny. The man has a real knack for finding the least entertaining people in the Black Country, and that’s some competition. I can’t wait for East Anglia, next week.

Which neatly brings us to Britain’s Got Talent (Saturday, ITV1), which may or may not have come with a question mark: Simon Cowell’s latest impression of Hughie Green, with Amanda Holden as the reincarnation of that strange cockney girl who also appeared on Opportunity Knocks. What was her name? Ah, how nebulous is national celebrity. The series is supposed to prove variety isn’t quite dead, but it should see it off. The only pleasure is watching the skin-crawling Piers Morgan, Gore-Tex man, impervious to any emotion or sensitivity. He seems to have learnt human as a second language, possibly from Derren Brown. He is by far and away the weirdest act in the room. His descent (ascent?) from editor of the Mirror to ventriloquist’s invigilator is, it must be said, one of the most comforting comeuppances of contemporary celebrity. He kept asking awful kiddie-party turns if they thought they were the sort of thing the Queen wanted to see, when you knew the one person the Queen would abdicate rather than sit next to was asking the question. If HM is to be the ultimate arbiter of modern popular entertainment, then the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards are a shoo-in, and I suspect she rather likes Lenny Henry – so restful. I’ve always thought the whole point of the Royal Variety Performance was two hours of torture for royalty and royalists put on by arty republicans.

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