Can You Live Without...? C4
Big Brother C4
Survivor ITV
The Drugs Laws Don't Work: The Phoney War C4

I enjoy a pretty piece of schmutter as much as the next person, but years spent working as 'a fashion journalist' mean that I know far too much about an industry on which millions of words are expended but no real 'journalism' is ever practised. If you're in the business, you're necessarily of it, too, so the only way out is to get out and slam the door behind you.

The graspingly cynical cycle of greed that is, for the most part, fashion's raison d'etre becomes, after prolonged exposure, deeply enervating. I resent paying a mark-up of 1,000 per cent for a garment that has as its 'core brand value' the sole function of signposting to other lookee-likees that we all belong to the same status club. But, happily, these days, I think I know myself much better than Calvin Klein ever will.

I doubt Calvin has ever set foot in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and here are five good reasons why I hope never to do so either: 1) it looks like Stepford; 2) it has the atmosphere of a studio backlot; 3) it's home to Posh and Becks; and 4) the residents consume more champagne per head than anywhere else in Britain (I've heard this trotted out half-a-dozen times on TV in the past year, so it must be true). Finally, and most persuasively, is 5) Mark and Mavis Ackerley and their kids, Michelle and Jonathan, live there - and they are the saddest nuclear family in Britain.

Can You Live Without... Designer Labels? , the latest in the variously entertaining Channel 4's series, sounded like a silly little piece of telly but it wasn't. It easily surpassed its own, presumably relatively low, expectations by being nothing short of gobsmackingly fascinating. Had this been broadcast on 1 April, I would have assumed it was A People Like Us -style spoof, a dark satire highlighting the emotional and spiritual vacuum of a society in which consumerism finally consumes itself and ends up evacuating designer stools.

But this wasn't satire - it was butt-clenchingly real. Ten minutes in, jaw on floor, I was more than ready to take to the streets and hurl Molotov cocktails at a smug summit gathering or, at the very least, through the windows of a Versace store (a longtime fantasy, as it happens). Truly, we live in terrifying times.

The branded Ackerley cattle, who spend 90 per cent of their income on labelled trash, apparently do not have a clue who or why they are, other than that they live to shop and shop to live, running scared in case they are ever exposed as less than the sum of their designer parts. For this lot, the removal of the labels from their wardrobes, bathrooms and garage (bye-bye Mercedes, hello Vauxhall) was tantamount to a lobotomy.

Naked, but for replacement kit from Asda, Matalan and BhS, they quailed and shivered in their virtual real world: 'They probably just think we're normal, everyday people,' lamented 16-year-old Michelle of other shoppers while, clad in shellsuits and cheap trainers, the family huddled together for emotional succour during their Trial-by-Arndale Centre.

Surely the only explanation for the Ackerleys' condition is that they are a freaky family of bubble-dwellers who have, some how, inured themselves against any of the ordinary pain that descends upon the rest of us, but I'm not even sure this is the case. There must be a lot more cringeing cattle out there for whom only an overdue prod of human suffering - illness, death, divorce, bankruptcy - will focus attention on the sheer pointlessness of a life spent sleepwalking in shopping malls.

It was deeply shallow-and-proud-of-it Mark ('I don't have any personality or any confidence. What I have is bits') who suffered the most. He even cheated, wearing his gold Rolex to business meetings and buying a Versace tie to distract from the misery of a high-street suit. At the end, however, there was some sort of redemption for Mavis (who had been quietly impressed by the contents of KwikSave's own-brand tins and was stylish enough to make a little bit of Matalan pass muster as Moschino). She even cried when the label-laden removal van regurgitated her wardrobe back on to the drive: 'I don't want them. I feel so wasteful. They've got to go.' The following week, Mavis donated half her clothes to a charity shop and seemed to view her appalling husband in a not entirely flattering new light.

Anyway, it was just as well the Ackerleys were such interesting specimens because the show's format was plodding and would have benefited from a few rent-a-shrinks to dispense comfy, crackerbarrel psychiatry, but apparently they're all busy working overtime on Big Brother and Survivor .

I wrote dismissively about the latter a few weeks ago, but now I'm doing a U-turn. Compared to the squealing playpen full of Big Brother 's babies, Survivor is like watching a bunch of Nobel laureates gathering together to create a blueprint for a new world order. And the backdrop is so much prettier.

For me, complete surrender to Survivor came with the last-man-standing-on-the-log-after-23 hours episode, which revealed that, even if they're still eating rats, these people have enough stamina, strength of character, wily intelligence and sheer greed to provide great telly, particularly now that the ejected tribe members will form the jury that casts the deciding vote for the winner. BB, meanwhile, suffers from both Familiarity-Contempt Syndrome and the fact that - some feat, this - it has managed to dumb itself down.

But though these aren't the brightest housemates that could have been assembled, last week's high emotions, confessions, arguments and personal injuries (surely Bubble will win?) made for satisfyingly voyeuristic viewing. It took me three weeks to get hooked into BB last year and the same seems to have happened this time around, even though it makes better viewing on the net. The 'Fancam' is particularly compulsive and sinister.

In the season of TV trivia, it was great to be reminded that there is still space in the schedules for an important documentary. No, make that An Important Documentary. Drugs Laws Don't Work: The Phoney War, was a credit to Channel 4, whose unique remit seems more and more often to waver in favour of ratings-grabbing.

Presented with a refreshing clarity of vision by Nick Davies, the programme argued logically and persuasively for the legalisation of heroin, not, presumably, a stance most viewers, however much they might want a government that will at least talk about drugs like adults, would previously have considered to be either desirable or attainable. By the end, I was angry that I could ever have been suckered by the prohibitionist political rhetoric that is the fundamental cause of the problem.

Are you sitting comfortably, children? Then we'll end with Davies's argument reduced to five good reasons not to believe in the majority of politicians: 1) heroin can be highly addictive and it is a very bad idea to start using it; but 2) it does not screw you up; because 3) what screws you up is the drug's illegality, which forces users and addicts to resort to crime to pay for drugs contaminated with all manner of poisons and to take the drugs in unhygienic conditions; so 4) if you give doctors back the powers they had 30 years or so ago (to prescribe pure heroin in controlled conditions), addicts will not continue to die in a festering pile of gangrenous abscesses and aneurysms but will be able to lead productive, crime-free lives while they tackle the deeper problem of why they started using in the first place. Then 5), the criminals are out of business, so we all live happily every after in a land that respects itself rather than the poor excuse for an enlightened society we presently inhabit.

And if you're very good and promise not to read under the bedclothes, tomorrow I'll tell you the story of Enid Bagnold, author of National Velvet and a morphine addict. Night, night children. Lights out and sweet dreams!