Oh, men. Men men men men men. Now that the fem-fest of Christmas is over - all those candles, and hugs; all that multitasking, and 3pm cava-and-cake - it is the turn of hard, thrusting, man-stuff-January. For the new year is a hard time. A lean time. A time when, until very recently, the only ones who would survive were those alpha enough to carve open the icy earth with a mighty sword and pull forth the rock-hard turnips within.

Of course, there aren't any men like that any more - both the Xbox and weak German lager have seen to that. Instead, man-wise, we must make-do-and-men with James May and Oz Clarke, touring around Britain in a caravan, in Oz and James Drink to Britain.

Now paired for their third series, Top Gear's May and Food & Drink's Clarke provide a simple, easy-to-run machine for producing endless TV footage, to wit: Clarke is a ponce, May is an oaf, and their push-me-pull-you class-riven squabbling can be easily picked up and transferred to any one of a number of subjects and locations. In their first series, they milked six half-hour episodes of cultural dissonance out of a wine tour of southern France, conducted in a vintage car picked by May.

Clarke would sip and sigh, “I'm getting a galloping haze of wild peaches, sloe-eyed houris, and crystal meth egrets, aquaplaning into Gethsemane,” May would shout, “It tastes like WINE with WINE flavours and a WINEY finish, you great girl's blouse,” and the director would quietly say “Cut”, thrilled with another day's productivity.

For the second series, Clarke & May cheerfully cantered around the wineries of California, in much the same manner, but with a slightly more expensive vintage vehicle, as befitted their ratings.

For this third bout, their gleeful eyes have turned to the booze lineage of Great Britain: our whiskies, bitters, gins and ales. Our inns, hop houses, cider presses and bathtub stills. In the first ten minutes, Clarke explains how British civilisation is built on the Yin and Yang of hops and barley - “People built villages, and towns, and cities, solely so they could brew!” - and then takes May on a rail tour of Yorkshire, stopping at station pubs on the way. By the time they get to Huddersfield they are slightly glassy-eyed, and May is saying, “Wine is a philosopher's drink - have enough and you'll start analysing a teapot. Beer is made to slake an Englishman's thirst, after he's spent all day building things,” and then burping.

I not only have to, but want to admit that I have a soft spot for May and Clarke's mini-tours. Clarke is slowly becoming the happy ruination of May - remorselessly eating into his carapace of faux boorishness with an ultimately fascinating and useful appreciation of “what is good”.

“You'll make beer complicated for me - just like you've made wine!” May wails, Clarke having insisted he knows what makes the beer in his hand excellent. Yes. With their combination of classic cars, beautiful scenery, reasoning and drinking, Drink to Britain is kind of like Inspector Morse - but without the murders.

Also like Morse without the murders - but also without the old cars, or the drink - is MasterChef, one of those rare cases of the BBC taking a heritage series and reinventing it for the better. For in new-boy judge Gregg Wallace, the show has found a compelling TV presence.

To put it extremely simply, yet extremely accurately, Wallace is the greediest bastard who ever lived. I do not mean this in a bad way. Being keen on your scran is vital for a cookery-show judge. But Wallace is emotionally involved in the MasterChef contestants' offerings in a way that goes leagues beyond “a competition”. It's not about MasterChef. It's about Wallace's tum-tum.

“MMMMM! That's BEAUTIFUL!” he will gloat, over pancetta-wrapped chicken with mash. “GLORIOUS, creamy, soft, buttery ARGH lovely tarragon. I could lick the plate CLEAN.” Imagine if the judges on Miss World were like that. Exactly.

Of course, this passion means that, when it goes wrong, Wallace is all but inconsolable. This week, when contestant John, 33, serves him a dud rhubarb crumble, Wallace seems driven to the very edge of his reason.

“It's all DRY! There's no JUICE!” he wails - poking around in the bottom of the ramekin with the same disconsolate air Begbie has in Trainspotting when the smack runs out.

Oz and James Drink to Britain, Tues, BBC Two, 8pm; MasterChef, Mon, BBC Two, 8.30pm

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