Wimbledon BBC1 and BBC2
The Cazalets BBC1
People Like Us BBC2
World of Pub BBC2

Now that there are so few heart-stopping live TV events, whenever a genuine 'Did you see?' moment does occur it's practically a mini moon-landing. Last Wednesday night, as the dog yawned with hunger, the phone went unanswered and the lamb in the oven shrivelled to resemble the mummified remains of a half-eaten Survivor contestant, I found myself hopping around the flat like a loon, shouting 'This is happening now! Unscripted! In real time! Look! Isn't telly great ?!'

Short of his actually winning, the three-hour, five-set thriller of a match in which 26-year-old Barry Cowan (such a perfect name for Britain's sixth best tennis player, ranked 256th in the world and generously described by commentators as 'a journeyman pro') played the tennis of his life (forcing Pete Sampras to break out in a light and becoming sweat so that between points the defending champion's Velcro stubble became even more lint-studded than usual) could only have made for better TV if John McEnroe had been commentating.

I'd seen Cowan interviewed about his prospects on Monday: a nice boy, a real Barry and as predictably stoic and diffident as any English player, he was looking forward to having his mum and dad watch him resoundingly thrashed by Sampras - but, hey, y'know (shrug, small smile, Princess Diana eyes), he promised to do his best. Even given the fact that Wimbledon's first week always provides a nail-biting five-setter out on Court 97 in which some unseeded Diego Krishnanslobovich pushes a rippling Brad Butch over the edge, like most viewers I had expected this match to provide, at best, 90 minutes of sunny prime-time wallpaper while I got on with my life. But, bless Bazza, there was nothing to lose except ratings for the BBC, so he dug deep and came up with tennis far better than anyone, including his opponent, could ever have dreamt of.

Pete Sampras married the lovely Bridgette Wilson just a few months ago (rumours that when they first met he was attracted because he thought her family manufactured tennis rackets are apparently unfounded) and, of course, whenever a top tennis player makes a love-match with an actress it's invariably all over bar the messy divorce (I have never quite forgiven Tatum O'Neal and Brooke Shields for distracting McEnroe and Agassi at the peak of their careers). Still, Sampras has nothing left to prove, and though I doubt we'll ever hear from Cowan again, it doesn't matter - he's (literally) served his purpose by showing us that the most successful exponent of grass court tennis (if not the finest: that's Mac, always and forever) is now at the very edge of the precipice that signals his decline - though it will be a steady, undramatic decline, for sure, and one that may even include his winning the men's singles title again this year.

Thanks then, Baz, not only for providing the stuff of a TV critic's dreams but also for this tiny-yet-historic sporting moment. And best of luck back in the real world, where Barry's up against Diego Krishnanslobovich in the first round of the Smidgen-on-the-Wold Challenge Shield, a small biannual tournament played on a cork surface on a tiny satellite of Saturn in front of an audience of 326 (if the weather's any good). Oh, and I'd get the Guardian 's front page from last Thursday framed and hung in the loo straight away if I were you, Bazza - newspapers fade and crinkle alarmingly fast at this time of year.

Back in the more predictable, scheduled world of summer television, the output is as meanderingly undemanding as the most sun-addled, Pimm's-flooded British brain could wish for. For example, week two of The Cazalets - a second division literary potboiler in which every single costume drama cliché has been blended to an irresistibly smooth purée in the BBC Magimix - pushed its tired old dysfunctional posh family plot forward with the aid of mix and match soap dialogue: 'Yes, of course. Thank you for letting me know. Goodbye doctor'/ 'I don't feel up to another baby. I don't want one. Isn't there anything I can do?'/ 'I wonder if you'd care to dine with me - if you have nothing better to do?'/ 'I find you utterly irresistible'/ 'So what is it, old girl?'/ 'It will be a wonderful thing for both of them - babies always are!', all set against a backdrop of chinking champagne glasses as everybody toasts 'To peace!' while Chamberlain speechifies on the wireless.

Watching The Cazalets is as pleasurably pointless and ultimately unmemorable an experience as a balmy summer afternoon spent making aimless al fresco conversation before nodding off under a shady tree and drooling on the blanket in-between swatting bothersome wasps - which, I hasten to add, isn't particularly meant to be a criticism, merely an observation that these days, for better or worse, many of us actually prefer watching real people make aimless al fresco conversation on balmy summer afternooons before nodding off under a shady tree and drooling on the blanket in-between swatting bothersome wasps.

If there's one positive thing Reality TV has brought to our attention, it's the end of era that has lasted longer than even Sampras's interminable career: if the Golden Age of costume drama kicked off with Brideshead and ended with Pride and Prejudice, what hope for adaptations of books that have been read by far fewer people? Why should we care about the Cazalets, who may dress for dinner and know how to address the help, but who are a bunch of wood tycoons, for gawd's sake, whose pretty country house is thatched !? Personally, I prefer my costume drama to be fiercely and unapologetically posh, thanks very much, rather than looking like a documentary about a Surrey house party hosted by the Henman family.

The last in this series of the quite brilliant cod-docusoap People Like Us, in which Roy Mallard followed the crew of an unidentifiable airline - variously 'Anonymous Airways', 'Anonymair', 'Inclandestine [sic] Airways' and 'British Confidential' - was the best, fizzing with predictable silliness (Roy Mallard to pilot: 'So, where does a short-haul flight end and a long-haul flight begin?' Pilot: 'Amsterdam.' Roy Mallard to trolley-dolly: 'Do you think you have to be all things to all men?' Dolly: 'I think that's just a male fantasy') as Chris Langham-as-Mallard followed a flight from London to Paris via 'the minimum number of at least one take-off and one landing, as laid down by the international law of physics'.

The dialogue reached not only dizzying new heights of inanity but equally spectacular levels of syntactical-strangulation: 'Though the passengers have barely had time to digest the full enormity of their braised chicken and rice things, up on the flight deck time is literally, literally, flying', and by the time our hero had endangered the safety of the flight, fallen out rather dramatically with the pilots and been arrested in Paris, I was wiping away tears. Next time around, might I suggest that Mallard takes a searching look at the world of a struggling unseeded British professional tennis player called Gary Wilson, who only took up tennis in the first place because he thought that playing with a Wilson racket would look really cool.

Incidentally, when the pilots requested anonymity, they (and indeed their plane) were pixellated like criminals on the News. Coincidentally, this device was also employed in the new sitcom World of Pub, in which one of the characters was a pixellated gangster. Another was called Dodgy Phil and was played by Kevin Eldon. Unfortunately, the sight of Eldon invariably provokes involuntary shivers down my spine, and onwards, to places I'd much rather they didn't go, distracting me from whatever business is at hand.

World of Pub - a slice of surrealism lite: Naked Gun meets The League of Gentleman - had its funny moments, but I'm afraid the presence of Eldon spoilt them, if only for me. There's no need for Kevin to take it personally, but having been so memorably convincing in a selection of horribly warped 'comedy' roles while a regular in Chris Morris's Jam , it's tough for me to relate to him as merely an actor, as opposed to, say, a deeply twisted human being. Indeed, if I ever spotted Eldon in the street, I think I'd probably scream. Mind you, this is a huge compliment - the last time I screamed in the street it was because I'd just spotted John McEnroe.