Depending on what interviews you have read, J. K. Rowling did some incredible things the moment she finished writing the Harry Potter series. In room 552 of Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel, in January 2006, she either danced a jig of delight, she burst out crying and didn’t stop for weeks or, according to the most recent report (from a Time magazine interview), she coolly defaced a statue of Hermes with a dedication to herself. What she didn’t do, or at least what we didn’t know about until last night’s J. K. Rowling: A Year in the Life (ITV1), was turn to an adjacent camera crew while chewing a piece of gum and calmly say: “There. I think that’s it.”

Billed as an exclusive insight into the daily reality of the world’s most famous author, the programme, as illustrated above, somehow managed to be hugely satisfying and massively disappointing at the same time. Directed by James Runcie, a fellow author at Rowling’s Bloomsbury stable, and the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, it offered us a plethora of revealing Rowling snapshots (baking a cake, sitting on a private jet with husband Neil, sifting through mementos with sister Di) that were bristling with originality and yet curiously underwhelming. Like some bizarre experiment in quantum celebrity, the giddy energy inherent in discovering the true Rowling dissipated the very second that this same discovery was made.

And this wasn’t just because Runcie’s inquisitorial approach was so soft (“What’s your favourite virtue?” he began, Jackie magazine style), or because the programme occasionally played like an extended promo for the Harry Potter brand (Runcie cooed once too often about the book’s commercial potency and popular appeal). No, the anticlimactic undercurrent of the show seemed to spring directly from Rowling herself. For here, despite tales of a difficult childhood, self-doubt and single-parent penury, or perhaps because of them, she seemed wildly normal. Runcie’s interviews, intercut with a year of Potter promotion, revealed a woman who was self-deprecating, occasionally open, quick to laugh and, well, bottom line, a bit of a nerd. When she babbled about the world of Potter, in particular, and of the fictional marriages and fictional future denizens of Potter offspring, you had to worry.

Not that we were expecting the crackpot eccentricities of Dorothy Parker or the torrid emotionalism of Sylvia Plath. On the contrary, Rowling’s billionaire-next-door earthiness helped to explain completely the mass appeal of her family-friendly creations. What wasn’t explained, however, was how much of that same appeal was due to the pulverising corporate muscle of the publisher Bloomsbury and movie producers Warner Brothers. But that, possibly, was a documentary for a different day.

Philip Pullman meanwhile, Rowling’s challenger to the children’s fantasy throne, was ably represented in a full-bodied adaptation of his Victorian murder mystery, The Shadow of the North (BBC One). The second in the Sally Lockhart series (the first was The Ruby in the Smoke last year) had Billie Piper back in centre stage as the gutsy 19th-century stockbroker and private investigator on the trail of a megalomaniacal Swedish industrialist Axel Bellmann (Jared Harris). Despite the moody production design and the dark and inky atmospherics, the show hovered on the outskirts of camp throughout.

The detective team, for instance, had something of a Private Eye Spice Girls about them – there was the old one (John Standing), the posh one (J. J. Field), the rough one (Matt Smith), and the funny-looking one with the prehensile lips (Piper). Their adventures were preposterous and culminated in the destruction of a doomsday weapon – the highly improbable “steam gun”. And yet despite the Boys Own idiocy and the obvious budgetary limitations (very few big money set-pieces) The Shadowhad a moody charm, and a belief in narrative chicanery that was compelling.

Finally, the execrable “comedy” Green Green Grass (BBC One) proved that Andy Millman’s When the Whistle Blows (the bomb from Extras) isn’t the worst sitcom on TV. The Christmas special last night guest-starred George Wendt from Cheers and featured flying manure and hysterical audience laughter. It was a mistake to cast Wendt, however, because the shadow of Cheers reminded us only of how comedy can be crafted and slyly honed rather than just flung at the screen, like muck.

Out of the box

The two most iconic staples of 1980’s children’s television – Basil Brush and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop – are back next month in a new hybrid programme entitled, originally enough, Basil’s Swap Shop. The show will pick up where Noel Edmonds sadly left off in 1982, by asking children all across the country to swap their Action Man mine sweepers for Sindy horse boxes. Not quite, says Brush boss Mike Heap, who claims that Basil and Swap Shop are going digital. “The digital element will enhance the viewing experience,” Heap explained, earlier this week, without going into specifics. “And children will be able to participate in the show first hand through the multiplatform interactive format the series will adopt.” Wow, all that, AND you get to dump your Tonka Truck!

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