You like trash, I like trash. Trash is OK. Life is hard, it’s cold, nothing wrong with hitching our skirts to the dumb-cart now and then. But Love Trap (Channel 4) takes dumb to a whole new asinine level, this is dumb in its lardiest form – a hideous Frankenstein idea that probably started on the back of a matchbox over a few drinks, then mushroomed, perhaps via an acid trip on a stag weekend, to something hideous and unintelligible.

The original matchbox idea for this four-part series is that you take a blonde (no English blondes available, so a Swedish one by the name of Karolina would have to do), who would live for a week each with an Italian, German, Australian, Ugandan and Brit to see if “all men were the same” or whether cultural differences made men different.

For no reason, all the men who auditioned worked in restaurants. Claudio was Italian and wore a beautiful caramel overcoat. Ossie (Brit, fish and chip shop) liked “beer, women and football”. Floren was a German in lederhosen, Sam an Australian who oddly – for all his moon-faced dimness – was the most engaging. Most scary: Alvin from Uganda, who sat down and within a few minutes was asking Karolina how she would feel “if I say I love you”. The series, totally unnecessarily, has invented a ruse where the men are unaware that they are “taking part in an Olympics of love” (they show up at Karolina’s flat for a week each), and think that they are simply being put through an extended blind date. There was no point in disguising the true nature of the show.

If Love Trap is meant to eradicate stereotypes, it failed. One hoped that the Italian would turn out to be nervy, insecure and start strumming a guitar in a threadbare jumper. But Claudio was a mega-smoothie, beautifully well-mannered, who blotted his copybook only by introducing his dodgy best friend, Giulio, who wanted to take Karolina to a fetish party. Toby the drunken Australian was great: when Karolina deliberately broke a heel to see who would carry her home (only Alvin did with great gusto), Toby took off his own shoes to walk home in unity. When asked to buy her gifts from their home countries most bought her bracelets and charms, but Toby bought her a blow up kangaroo.

Alvin was hugely intense. “Do you know you can go mad because of love?” he said, bug-eyed, over lunch. He insisted that she read the Bible. “I don’t have time,” Karolina said. “Get time tonight,” he instructed tersely, and later went off on one about gays having big cars.

Absurdity coalesced upon absurdity: this was nothing more than reality show knockabout, utterly lacking in substance and intent. Would the guys turn their nose up at Karolina’s national delicacy of decomposing herring? Well, no. Would they make a move on her? No. Would the German go a bit nuts at Walthamstow dog track and the Italian curl his lip at the hideousness of it all? Hell, yeah.

The final task was to face down a bully in a bar. It was supposed to show how chivalrous the men were, but there are enough nutters in enough bars to make this challenge – in real life, not using an actor to play said hard nut – a totally foolish, and potentially life-endangering, act. Only the Brit managed to get the bully guy to bugger off. But it’s not the men who should be being interrogated here but Karolina. She went on about being cossetted, protected and saved by her ideal man. Boys, you can do so much better than this whingy Fay Wray.

There was subterfuge, too, in Secret Millionaire (Channel 4). Gill Fielding, a multimillionaire, grew up in Canning Town, East London, very very poor. She went back to find some deserving cases upon whom to sprinkle gold dust – as it turned out, a dancing and acting school and Sabrina, who ran a single mother’s group. The inevitability of it all was so cheesy the whiff of a thousand Gorgonzolas emanated from the screen. You found yourself asking: would these people really just tell this stranger all about their lives with a camera crew in attendance?

But no matter. When she revealed herself and handed over her cheques, your heart soared and molten tears fell. It never pays to be too lofty about the reality TV beast. It knows how to bite.

Out of the box

— Some sad news: Hilda Braid, who played Nana Moon in EastEnders, died on Tuesday. She was 78. Braid was great in EastEnders: Nana Moon was always a slightly dotty, unpredictable beat behind the deranged action going on around her. The episode in which she and grandson Alfie (Shane Richie) visited war veterans’ graves in Normandy deservedly won a British Soap Award for Best Single Episode.

— Strictly Come Dancing is not all sequins and ra-ra fun. How has Kate Garraway survived? A big GMTVvoting block? After Dominic Littlewood was voted off on Saturday, his dancing partner Lilia Kopylova reportedly ignored him in the bar – she thought his rows with the judges cost them their place. No signs of this on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday where it was all (slightly strained) smiles between them.

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