Preview DVDs of The Duchess in Hull (ITV1) were not issued in the traditional manner to television critics. Instead we were invited into Chateau Despair, otherwise known as ITV corporate headquarters, to watch the documentary in the presence of her Ferginess. Actually, we saw more of it than she did, for she walked out during the show's early New York scenes in which the cameras caught her on a bad morning (“Every single moment of any day I think that I am fat, ugly and disgusting”). We also suffered alone during the embarrassing sequence when she lectured her daughter's public school on the subject of her self esteem. When she returned to the room, straying from her brief that the programme's purpose was to save the Sargerson family of Hull from death by a thousand oven chips, she praised her own bravery in agreeing to make this film. The British press might crucify her all over again. And we have.

There are certainly some ill- advised moments in the first show - not only those cited above but her unconvincing attempts to work up some enthusiasm for Hull and the B&B in which she was staying - but there were some marvellous moments, too, among them her entrance into the Sargerson home where the family, who had been expecting their saviour might be Nigella Lawson, Vanessa Feltz or at least “that bloke off Trisha Bootcamp”, failed to recognise her. To her credit amused, the Duchess went on to display real warmth and empathy for the Sargersons as well as dismay. Their diet may have had its roots in poverty but that was not, she quickly realised the whole story. Granddad, for instance, grew fresh veg on his allotment but his heirs would not touch it. Dad allowed his 13-year-old son to skive off school feigning illness, and light up upon his return. The Duchess said some discipline was needed. She was right.

There is no doubt that the disgusting food it consumes is the British working-class's greatest enemy. Again and again during Marilyn Gaunt's wonderful documentary Class of '62: From 16 to 60 (BBC Two), its six Yorkshire matriarchs reached for the lard, the bacon and the ready meal to feed their families. In every other way, Gaunt's old classmates showed true wisdom, the sort won from 60 years' self-sacrifice. These women for whom feminism come too late or not all, had spent their adulthoods caring for others, a curse that was continuing as their parents reached artery-clogged senility.

The film was a follow-up to two previous programmes Gaunt made in 1985 and 1995. God must have laughed a lot to hear the ambitions of those 40 and 50-year-olds. The nearest the class had to a star, Sally Adcock, played the naive waiter Jane Smith in Crossroads in the 1970s. Ditched, she planned to make her fortune writing Mills & Boon novels. Instead she spent years looking after her Alzheimec mother. Like her contemporaries, Adcock now pursues freedom. None of these women, at 60, wants to do nothing for ever and ever. They want to do loads, but do it for themselves.

Who knows, incidentally, what's making Merthyr ill? It can't be the leek and the cawl. Yet, according to Panorama (BBC One) one in five of its working population is “on the sick”. Shelley Jofre's worrying report was sceptical about everything: how sick the sick really were, why they were put on disability benefit, and how easy it would be to get them working. Among her findings were that Job Centres in the 1990s had advised unemployed miners with dodgy but not incapacitating backs that ill was the way to go. This pleased governments which did not need higher unemployment stats, but turned “the sick” into a career choice for a generation. Now Labour was cracking down. Fine, she concluded, but expect many of those newly restored to health to sign up not for work but the dole.

To see a genuinely sick man, you needed to watch Jon Ronson's documentary Reverend Death (Channel 4) in which he followed America's Rev George Exoo as he went round encouraging the terminally well to top themselves. “This is a great adventure. Look forward to it,” our Rev Peter Pan told a depressed woman who, when the moment came, stood up and toasted herself a bagel instead. This was a rich, dark comedy of a documentary. At one euthanasia-practitioners get- together, Exoo even extolled the “comic resonances” in his work. I think he meant “cosmic”. The only mystery was why Ronson, who filmed Exoo for six years, kept claiming to like the creep.

Out of the Box

My apologies if the above review has a breathless feel to it. I do not usually attempt to discuss four programmes in 750 words. I can honestly say, however, that in more than a decade's reviewing, yesterday's was the best television I have ever seen broadcast on a single night. I recommend you seek out what you missed on the web's catch-up services. If you can only get to see one, my choice has to be Marilyn Gaunt's Class of '62. The last, indeed only time I met Gaunt, a few years back, she was complaining that finding commissions was so hard, she was thinking of throwing it all in and opening a bed and breakfast. I'm glad she didn't but I am now horrified that she is calling Class her “last” film. Say it ain't so, Marilyn.

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