It is a truth universally acknowledged that any predictable drivel ever written about Jane Austen has to begin with those six words. In this respect alone, ITV's big-budget, time-travel costume drama Lost in Austen does not disappoint.

In nearly all other respects, however, it does. At some point in the preliminary meetings for this stupid, stupid programme I bet you somebody will have said “Life on Mars meets Pride and Prejudice!” And somebody else will have clapped, and decided that this was a very good idea. These people were mor- ons. Take them out, ITV, and shoot them.

Shoot them in the head. For they have committed the unforgivable creative sin of forgetting that not everybody is exactly like them.

Our heroine, our Sam Tyler, is Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper), a boozy slapper with a passion for, yes, Pride and Prejudice. She smokes and drinks and has a beery boyfriend, but actually she likes nothing more than curling up with the same English A- level set text and reading it over and over again, every night. Implausible? You think? Well, maybe that's because you don't work in telly, and all your friends aren't dreadful. Anyway, one day, and for no reason we will ever know, she finds Elizabeth Bennet standing in her bathroom.

What's that whooshing noise? That's right, it is the sound of 99.9 per cent of the potential audience going “Who the hell is Elizabeth Bennet?” This is the inherent, obvious flaw in Lost in Austen, and it rears its head almost from the first moment. Our Amanda does her best, poor love, by brandishing her dog-eared Penguin Classic and wailing “You're a character! In a book! This one! Written 200 years ago! What are you doing in my bathroom?” But this clod-hops a touch too far in the other direction in my view, and was obviously only added to the final draft in a panic, anyway.

Amanda finds a secret door under her, erm, shower head, and goes through it, and Elizabeth comes the other way and locks it somehow, despite only having a showerhead to work with. Thereafter, you'll need a fairly intimate knowledge of Pride and Prejudice to be able to follow what the hell is going on. Me, I Googled a plot summary.

Seriously. It's not enough here to have once seen the movie, and to know that Austen's book is basically about some chippy tart in a big crumbly house, mooning over a soggy stuffed shirt with a stick up his arse. You need to know details: that Bingley is supposed to fancy Jane; that stuff happens at a dance; that Jane sets off for Netherfield in the rain, the works. And, while knowing all this, you still have to be stupid enough not to have minded all that crap about the secret door in the shower cubicle. Who are you? Do you work for ITV? Do you mind that I hate you?

Maybe Lost in Austen will get better in future episodes. It could be almost interesting to hear about how Elizabeth is getting on, over in Hammersmith. And, once you get past the fact that the whole project is a really, really bad and stupid idea that will be incomprehensible to almost everybody, you do start to notice some good bits. The characters are fairly well drawn (by Jane Austen), the acting isn't bad, and there are nice touches, such as the way Amanda keeps checking her mobile. As a whole, though, the thing is smug nonsense. Whether that's universally acknowledged or not, I couldn't give a hoot.

And remarkably, for all that, it is considerably better than Desperate Housewives, which returns this week, again, for the second half of the fourth series. I haven't seen DH since the early days, and watching it was a bit like finding out that the cheery slutty girl from your school has actually become a prostitute.

Thank God, then for Ugly Betty; smart, funny and knowing as ever, and also returning this week to remind us that not every populist, female-focused drama has to be hateful or insane. Well, it is quite insane. Wilhelmina is trying to get impregnated with her dead boss's baby, Amanda is speaking to mediums to find out who her dad is, and Betty is still being, essentially, a do-gooding little freak who ought to get over herself, and bog off to write about dolphins for The Independent. In fact, now I think of it, Betty Suarez would love Lost in Austen. And she doesn't work for ITV at all. Silly me.

Lost in Austen, Wed, ITV1, 9pm; Desperate Housewives, Wed, Channel 4, 10pm; Ugly Betty, Channel 4, Fri, 9pm.

Caitlin Moran is away

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