The Secret Life of Happiness BBC1
Living By The Book: The Rules C4
Perfect Breasts C4
To Diet For C4
Confidence Lab BBC2

New Year, New You. Out with the old, in with the firm and shiny, taut and trim... this was TV's designated National Inadequacy Week. 'Happiness is something we all want,' warned Nigel Planer's voiceover at the start of BBC1's The Secret Life of Happiness. So, will more money make us happy? Well, here was media-friendly, Schadenfreude-inducing Lottery winner Karl Crompton (£10.9 million) to tell us why it won't: 'The main problem has been jealousy!' Karl gave a million pounds each to his mum, dad and brother and now flies helicopters, drives fast cars, sponsors a motorbike team and is 'project managing' the completion of the obligatory Lottery dream home.

Unfortunately, he has also lost his best friend - the friend who thought £100,000 was a tangible measure of their mateship. But Karl had told him: 'If I give you £100,000, do I give £80,000 to someone else I've known for less time? Do I put a price on all your heads?' Personally, I think, Karl might succeed in dampening some of this envy if he avoided appearing quite so often on television.

The best advertisement for happiness seemed to be Kelly Holmes, thrilled with her Olympic 800m bronze simply because she hadn't expected a medal at all (tip: set yourself relatively low goals and then accidentally exceed them). Or perhaps happiness might come as part of the DNA package, especially if one was born as half of a pair of irritatingly giggly identical twins: 'What makes you laugh most, Daphne?' asked Barbara. 'You!' replied Daphne, laughing. This year, then, I shall enter the London marathon in the expectation that I will pass out with cramp long before I've waddled a mile. Imagine my joy, laughter and the accompanying serotonin-high if I were to complete two miles. Weak with happiness just thinking about it - maybe I'll just carry on thinking about it after all.

My word, I'm feeling optimistic now. Got a bad track record when it comes to relationships? Never fear: Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider are two terrifyingly thin and fearsome Manhattanites - a cross between party-scene extras from Sex And The City and Channel 5's no-nonsense House Doctor, Ann Maurice - who wrote a book called The Rules which promises to bludgeon the man of one's dreams into marriage, whether he wants it or not. On hand to test The Rules, in C4's Living By The Book, were three women, including Karen, 28, a divorced mother of one, who tended to be just a wee bit needy 'and wifey' with boyfriends.

'I'm shocked,' said Ellen as she watched a video of Karen preparing an elaborate dinner for David, a man she'd known only a month. 'You only make dinner on his birthday,' agreed a disapproving Sherrie. 'She sounds desperate.' 'No man marries you because you're making a perfect whatever-she's-making. This is a Monday ? This is so not meant to be happening. He's getting a frightened look on his face,' raved Ellen.

Soon, however, thanks to at least some of 'the rules' (Karen ignored 'wear short skirts and get a nose job', but went along with 'always end a phone call first', 'don't accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday' and 'be a creature unlike any other') she had David wrapped around her little finger; emotional foreplay that would, apparently, result in her getting something even shinier wrapped around another finger. Then David invited Karen away for a week in Tunisia, discovered her copy of The Rules and they argued non-stop. Karen dumped him a month later which, for a former serial dumpee, was presumably a victory of sorts.

There had been so much press surrounding Channel 4's Perfect Breasts that, to be honest, I was feeling desperately inadequate long before I saw the show. Unlike all my female columnar peers, not only had I not yet written a thousand frothing words about the tragedy of teenage girls wanting breast implants but I was still a pathetically unfashionable 36B. Obviously, something had to give and bigger boobs could well be the key to my elusive happiness. After all, having lived with these ones most of my life, they're starting to bore me - and what self- respecting woman wears the same shoes they were wearing 20 years ago?

'Life's tough when you've got no boobs,' intoned several serious, doll-faced young women. While 19-year-old Laura's floppy funbags were getting her down so much she was starting to scowl like Patsy Palmer. 'I thought swimming might do it,' said Laura's dad, Gill, 'but Laura can't swim. 'How would you feel if you had a small penis?' said Laura. 'It's not the same thing at all,' said Gill. 'Yes it is.' 'No it isn't...'

Happily, however, Laura's mum had the full measure of her daughter's misery and took her off to Harley Street where Laura gently fondled 350 cubic centimetres of silicone. I was poised to make the call myself - at least until the operation, which was both hilarious and horrific by turns. No, fresh perky breasts might well bring me considerable joy, but I am not ready to have my fleshy scatter-cushions restuffed quite so brutally. Apparently, they need replacing quite often, too, but if you can't buy the pads in the John Lewis sale and do it yourself, I'm really not interested.

Perhaps a New Year diet will do the trick? 'Dieting's like being with Liz Taylor,' said Arabella 'Does my bum look big in this?' Weir, in Channel 4's To Diet For. 'You must know from the start that it's not going to work...' From flat-chested flappers to Twiggy and Kate Moss, a century of skinny-minnies were paraded for our envious delectation: 'Women look better slim,' said an unrepentant Mary Quant, 'and clothes look better if some of the bones show'. Sadly, I don't think she was talking about underwiring.

This was an amusing programme, with a pithy commentary from Mel Giedroyc, but, so keen was it to trash the concept of faddy diets - something ghastly from the 1960s called The New Sego Spoon-Up from Pet, to SlimFast, the F-Plan, the Cambridge and The Zone - in favour of witty soundbites from Ms Weir, that even when it came across a diet that works, it didn't dare spoil the fun. Last year, reader, I lost a stone in three weeks thanks to Dr Atkins' high protein, low-carb Diet Revolution and felt great, even before I'd found out that Jennifer Aniston, Anna Wintour and Nigella Lawson were all devotees. Nigella was featured on To Diet For but they weren't about to let a cute documentary idea get in the way of the truth: that you really can eat, as Ms Lawson admitted, 'egg and bacon for breakfast... butter sauces with steak... and as much fat and protein as you like', and lose weight. Perhaps the best short-term advice, though, came from Weir: 'Never eat in the nude.'

Fully dressed (with a smile), abdominals rippling and a packet of trusty macadamia nuts to hand, perhaps it is only my unhappy head that still needs fixing? Time to check into groovy country hotel, Babington House, with BBC2's Confidence Lab (and, in a very good week for resting comedians doing voiceover work, Dawn French).

The first episode in this new series concentrated on instilling confidence into Nigel the 'lazy-minded' chef and Maria, a charity worker who is so terrified of public speaking that she vomits and pulls out her hair.

Coached and coaxed by a battalion of therapists - psychiatrists, business psychologists, body language experts, communications coaches, voice coaches, dance therapists, sports motivators and more besides - Nigel and Maria eventually emerged, tearily, into a bright new world of success, achievement and rampant positivity.

It was lovely, really, but also quite an exhausting emotional journey, even for the viewer. 'Unzip the clavicles,' said the beautifully named dance therapist, Kerry Ribchester, to Nigel. Later, Nigel admitted that he would probably have preferred to unzip her Rib-chesters: 'Big thank you to Kerry. You're inspirational, you're sassy, you're sexy... and "sorry" to your boyfriend.' Nigel is now in charge of food for 170 Whitbread pubs, while Maria even enjoys making presentations to the police. Yes, there's no doubt at all that a week spent on Dr Atkins's diet at Babington House with a copy of The Rules and a Wonderbra will ensure unbridled happiness for all.