Oceans (BBC Two)

It was very disappointing not to see a hammerhead shark in the Sea of Cortez in the first episode of Oceans. Hammerheads are one of nature’s gorgeous freaks with their squashed, blunted faces and what looks like a huge telegraph pole instead of a nose. The sexy men and women scouting the oceans on our behalf, including Jacques Cousteau’s grandson Philippe, said they cared about finding some hammerheads for environmental reasons: if there weren’t any, what did this tell us about the marine ecosystem? Yeah, right . . . they wanted to dive and check out the action on the seabed. Nothing wrong with that. Own up to having the time of your life, guys.

It seemed there were no hammerheads because of the craze for shark fin soup; and also because there had been an invasion of my new favourite sea creature: the Humboldt squid. Wow, how COOL are they? The Humboldt squid are the vacuum cleaners of the ocean, eating so much that there’s nothing left for anything else. The divers — again justifying it on some environmental pretext — went to look at them. The Humboldt flash out of nowhere like flying exclamation marks with vivid red underbellies. They have menacing, flaring tentacles with suckers that have rings of sharp gold teeth. Their eyes are black, glossy and huge.

After a sortie to a boring old shipwreck (with on-board impromptu nosh of fresh scallops), the team found another flimsy environmental excuse to go diving with sperm whales. For some time, the team tried to get some of the spitty, bubbly stuff that the sperm whales exhaled, but every time they got near the whales flicked their tales and submerged. Quite extraordinarily, they had a crazy inventor guy on board who sent a remote-control helicopter over to the whales (it was like Thunderbirds and totally thrilling) to collect the sample.

Oceans ended with a full-on sperm whale orgy, with a 40-tonne male surrounded by females. What a stud. His horniness seemed to affect the divers. One of the women said she felt the whale’s presence pulsing through her body, while Philippe Cousteau was so elated that he wanted — and got — a hug.

The conclusion of the show tried to inject further environmental sobriety. The voiceover (Mark Halliley, the same guy who narrates The Apprentice; you keep expecting a marine biologist to get fired at any moment) told us very gravely that the ocean environment was “in flux” and then that in the face of all the change occurring to the sea “life can adapt and thrive”. It probably can, but how?

Oceans hovers uncomfortably between a lush travelogue, with hot, tanned people going for extended dips with colourful marine life (fine, nothing wrong with that) and a serious examination of the state of the oceans, somewhat lacking the detail and context of what the environmental changes actually are. It can do both these things of course, but it’s presently focusing on the pleasure principle, with a cursory nod to the serious stuff. The Humboldt squid deserves better.

The Last Millionaire (BBC Three)

Even when it’s not on, The Apprentice is everywhere: Natural Born Sellers was ITV’s polyester shirt take on the format, while The Last Millionaire bungs foreign travel (and a confusing logic) into the mix. The idea is there are six teams, two millionaires in each, out to make a profit from almost nothing in a series of foreign locations. At the end of each week, the team that has made the most money goes home, the winners that week, while the losers carry on competing until only two losers are left. One of those loser wins the competition. It’s the flipside of a conventional competition — perverse yet compulsive.

As with Natural Born Sellers and The Apprentice, the casting is geared for conflict. A yoga devotee called Dimple clashed with team-mate Natalie over the number of events to hold. They also put all their trust in a random local who proved appalling at getting pedestrians to come to their restaurant. Two other bigheads thought they’d struck gold with a night at Istanbul’s hottest rooftop club, but were then apparently fleeced by the club’s owners.

The number of Olivers is confusing: one struggled with selling water to tourists (he asked a restaurant owner for ice to keep all the bottles cold, to be presented with a little tray of cubes). Another Oliver tried to organise a party on a glamorous island, but all the glamorous people scarpered before the evening took off. How did these people make their millions?

The two winners, James and Jaqueline, were Scottish, which is all they had in common. She made her money in a dot-com and said something about being one of Britain’s leading digital marketing experts (are people’s jobs becoming harder to understand?). J and J set themselves up as “youth marketing consultants” and fought in front of askance clients. As this week’s winners, they exited the show. That doesn’t make sense and the number of Olivers remains the same. The Last Millionaire is fun, but unnecessarily hard work.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette