How witty Cutting Edge: Phone Rage (Channel 4) thought it was, with ironic songs such as Happy Talk playing over the horror stories of people left hanging on the line by call centres. Phone Rage laid this clever-cleverness on with a trowel and, while it was supposed to be about the anger we feel when confronted by endless tweety music and the faceless, “press 3 to be connected” business of trying to sort out a gas bill, the documentary led to a different frustration all of its own: it was badly constructed, uninformative and, despite its clownish clothing, unfunny.

The angry customers, with whom we were supposed to identify, only increased our sympathy for the call centre workers. One admitted to using British phrases to overseas call centres as a way of winding them up and making a racist point. Of the people answering our calls in Britain, First Direct's centre was like a sinister playground (“Paddy's Powerhouse” named after the manager), with workers rewarded with a Creme Egg if they managed to lob a “tremendous” into a customer exchange.

To relax, and have fun, they threw foamy balls at each other. Now, if you were in the middle of taking a load of verbal abuse down the phone and then were hit by a little foamy ball on the back of the head, would that make you laugh (haha, cra-zeeee place to work this!), or would it make you feel ever so slightly murderous?

The sign the Powergen workers held up (“Help” written in big black letters on a yellow card) was more like it. Quite what help would come - perhaps professional shouters who would give really evil customers as good as they got? - but that was the problem with Phone Rage. It would have been good to establish some context: where was the first call centre; how have they grown; where are they mostly found; how do they work; how many people are employed in the industry - a potted history; a look to the future.

But Phone Rage opted for whimsy. It did not question the mechanics of the “accent reduction” course one woman had to go on before becoming a Cape Town-based call centre worker (for British customers of an insurance company). OK, we know it's because she has to understand us and we have to understand her, but the stridency of the class teacher had me gnashing my teeth. (“Who's gaining competency?” she demanded of the trainees.) But her tone and bearing were good preparation for the calls themselves.

The caller and call centre worker were caught in a “cyclical wheel of hate”, one customer said. We ring them with steam coming out of our ears, they deal with our calls having attended mind-sapping, management- speakish training seminars. And so we were invited to laugh. But call centres aren't funny. This wasn't the programme to take them to task about their failings, or why they have proliferated so rampantly.

My editor may cut out the following words: “poof”, “fairy”, “queen”, “fudge-packing ponce”, “bumboy”, “woofter”. They came in a hailstorm of homophobic abuse in Ashes to Ashes (BBC One). Yes, a wider story was told. Nice Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), transported back to 1981 from 2008, tried and morally succeeded at least in reforming the Neanderthal bigotry of Gene Hunt and colleagues, and also helped a young gay man come out to his parents. The language, though? The tone?

No doubt the justification here is that it's Gene Hunt, everyone knows he's a bigot, that's what he'd say. And he and his mates were shown to be fools. But it was said with lip-smacking relish. Gene Hunt is on the brink of becoming a kind of icon of the sniggering, unreconstructed lad. Women find it hot, apparently. Sexual equality? Not on my patch, lad.

Interviewing Philip Glenister, who plays Gene Hunt, one presenter said recently that audiences like the character because he says stuff “you couldn't say now”. But this isn't, as was implied in the presenter's tone, something to regret. Much of what is derided as “political correctness” is about thinking before you spout offensive rubbish. It's a familiar personal bugbear, but bears restating: would the BBC be so free and easy using extreme racist language as it does with gays in primetime? No. But gays are an easy target and the BBC seems to enjoy playing the playground bully.

OUT OF THE BOX

The fun never ends with Primeval, the hit ITV1 Saturday night show about professors chasing dinosaurs. Titan Books has launched a series of books based around the show. The first, Primeval: Shadow of the Jaguar by Steven Savile, has bizarre creatures aplenty: “It was not, by any stretch of even the most warped imagination, a Thylacosmilus... it was awkward and ungainly, almost like a hybrid of lupine, avian and shadows.”

Rock Rivals has received a roasting from X Factor judge Louis Walsh, who told a newspaper yesterday there was more “action, more drama and a lot more talent” in the actual show than the ITV1 drama inspired by it. Walsh couldn't be sore because, as he reveals, they shot a cameo using him which was cut? Nah, that would be unlike him.

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