Cutting Edge: Ninety Naps a Day (Channel 4)

Narcolepsy sounds a lot more magical and intriguing than the grind of suffering from it. Ninety Naps a Day followed three people whose days are punctuated by sudden and sometimes violent descents into slumber. The science of narcolepsy and the associated condition, cataplexy is mysterious and wasn’t fully explained. But it was visible. Samantha, a law student, slumped on her mother’s shoulder while out shopping; at a key presentation her concentration failed, the insidious tiredness washed over her and she had to leave the room and lie down.

Tony, 14, had to have a classroom assistant to take care of him as his sudden spells of sleep occurred during school hours. As the rest of his friends got on with being teenagers, he had to manage this debilitating, isolating condition.

Christine and Ken had been struggling with his condition for nearly 40 years of marriage, although as the wonderful, doughty Christine noted, Ken hadn’t fallen asleep on their wedding day. But, as she talked, Ken fell asleep without warning and Christine confessed it was like living alone: “He may as well not be here half the time.” At that moment he woke up.

The three sufferers went to a Narcolepsy Network conference in Albany, New York. The organiser, Dawn, met them all at the airport wearing a strange hat. Ken, a no-nonsense kind of guy, bristled at this hint of lunacy and bristled more when he was greeted by what appeared to be two men dressed up as flowers practising some form of interpretive dance as a welcome at the hotel where the meeting was taking place. He wasn’t going to give himself over to the hugs and self-affirmation of the “sex and intimacy” workshop.

The hotel had set up an anteroom beside the meeting rooms, filled with beds and mats. The after-lunch slot, the narrator noted wittily but not cruelly, was a “tough gig” for a narcolepsy specialist, as the room filled with well-fed but inevitably even sleepier than usual narcoleptics.

Samantha went to a nutrition workshop but was underwhelmed. She felt she had done what she could to make her life as normal as possible and this was all unhelpful, impractical mumbo-jumbo: “It’s self-indulgent. There’s no miracle cure here.” But Tony met other children with the condition, which helped him to make a decision about taking possibly life-enhancing medication, and Ken and Christine spoke up during one of the sessions, with Ken quoting Puff the Magic Dragon in tribute to his devoted wife, while Christine cried that until now she hadn’t realised how serious narcolepsy was.

Sam realised she had to at least acknowledge how the condition marked her out as different, and we left her — just after saying she was not going to hide it any more — suddenly falling asleep right there in front of the camera. It reminded you how terrifying it must be for the sufferer not to have any control over this condition, and also how dangerous. The sleep can happen anywhere, any time. If Nick Holt’s tender, interrogating film does anything, perhaps it will fire enough interest in some proper support system for UK sufferers: for Sam, Tony and Ken the American meeting was the first time they had met anyone else with the condition.

Natural Born Sellers (ITV1)

In the salesman elimination show Natural Born Sellers, Thea was still grinning manically and going on about sex appeal. Her ragdolly head and glittering eyes are unnerving. The salesmen were supposed to be selling double glazing, but in her case these seemed like X-rated windows.

Naturally, the most watchable characters on this cheap and brilliant rip-off of The Apprentice are the most monstrous. You may almost have to avert your eyes from Scott, the tufty-haired ball of stress and irritation who ended each phone call with a “Bye bye bye”. When he was really pleased with himself, having sold a conservatory, say, using no charm whatsoever, Scott had a catchphrase to stroke himself with: “Check your bad self out.” My favourite Scott-ism was: “If you think about windows, think about me.”

The casting is peerless: Danny, the hangdog one, is treating it like the Olympics, desperate for the glory each week of being the victorious “top dog” and squiring the keys to the Lexus for the next seven days. This week Scott seemed out in front, then gave two leads to colleagues who were struggling, not out of the goodness of his bad-self heart, but because if they all sold a minimum of £15,000 then the show’s prize fund would be bolstered. The competitors’ methods (sketchy) and their knowledge (low) are doing salesmen no favours: one couldn’t measure a window correctly and overcharged her customer by £19,000.

This is compulsive but also depressing: the roadside hotels and the pantomime of having to hand your mobile back are excruciatingly well conceived. It’s not a sexy business being a salesman. Arthur Miller famously had his die. ITV1 is having a cruel and brilliant laugh at this beknighted breed’s (receipted) expense.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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