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Why his agent should loathe him quite as much as he patently does is an Iago-ish mystery, but only someone who wanted to collapse a sensitive actor’s career would have encouraged him to take the lead in Bonekickers, possibly the most jaw-droppingly misbegotten and fabulously dire drama made this century. The box set should have a stake put through its heart. It would have been enough to send most actors back to provincial rep, but it says something for how much Bonneville is loved that he is back again in Hunter — and once again, it’s a seismic dud, a huge, floppy catastrophe of a whodunit, and if you want to know whodunit, well, it’s the agent again.

This is the BBC’s cheery, ever-so-English attempt to keep up with the successful American genre of dead-body procedural policing. It comes over as rather CSI Lewis, set in the most unlikely police station, which is got up to be Channel 4’s newsroom. Bonneville spends his time looking confused and terrified, as well he might. The plot was an unpleasant take on Midsomer Murders, with anti-abortionists killing children to stop everyone else killing children. No, it didn’t make any better sense at the time. All the rest — the sub-plots, acting, editing and music — was dreadful. So we can wish Hugh well in all his future engagements, and I’ll have a skinny latte and a cherry danish.

Skins, the teenage drama, is trying to make itself a fashion brand by getting rid of last season’s look and bringing in a completely new bunch of actors. I say actors, but they’re just good-looking kids. Now, plainly, this series is not meant to be watched by the likes of me, and it does feel rather like surreptitiously logging on to your teenage child’s Facebook page. There are a lot of very St Trinian’s nubile girls — it’s like an effortful Hollyoaks for after the watershed.

The naughtiness and in-yer-face raunchy, are-you-shocked-yet? hyperbole reeks of grown-ups trying to get down with the kids. It’s too much like a youth-club vicar talking slang, or balding scriptwriters in the Groucho muttering “wicked” and flicking their fingers. I may well be wrong. The kids may love it. But that doesn’t make it any good. Look at what else teenagers love. My guess is, if they watch it, it will be with a stony irony and lip-curling sarcasm. I vaguely remember lip-curling and irony are the main responses to all of life when you’re a teenager.

So, we say farewell to Tony Hart, a man who taught us that art was more than a hill of beans. It was a sea of macaroni, a beach of rice and lentils, and a small corrugated cardboard boat.

Hunter (BBC 1, Monday)

Big Chef Takes on Little Chef (Channel 4, Monday to Wednesday)

Could You Eat An Elephant? (Channel 4, Wednesday, Jan 14)

Skins (E4, Thursday)

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