I wanted to write something cheery and light this week, it being the new year and a time, one would hope, for optimism. And perhaps I still shall. I'll certainly try. As I put down these words, however, my viewing is dominated - as yours will also have been - by the grim news from Asia and Africa.

I find that I cannot put some of the images out of my mind - and this, I'm afraid, has rather brutally shoved into context my initial impulse, which was to describe the performance of Rhys Ifans as Peter Cook in Terry Johnson's biopic of the comedian, Not Only But Always, as 'indelible' (in case you are wondering, I saw a preview before the tsunami hit).

The boy did good, certainly. But this morning, at least, his impression, for all its tinny brilliance, feels about as indelible as mascara in a monsoon. It has run clean out of my mind.

This, though, is not the place for pity or piety. So on the subject of the earthquake and its aftermath, I will say only this. First, how amazing the news coverage has been: reporters miraculously appearing in places you have never heard of, eyewitness accounts like nothing Hollywood could even conjure up (see - only just a few brief paragraphs in and I've resorted to cliché).

Second, how deeply vexing the news coverage has been, especially that of ITN in its News at Somewhere Around 10 incarnation.

On Wednesday, I watched, appalled, as Nina Hossain presented this programme from the preposterous ITN studio, a set so exultantly strutting and space age, it might have been whistled up by the satirists at The Day Today.

Some news, the tsunami being a prime example, is so terrible that it speaks for itself. It does not require hysteria or hyperbole and, least of all, a 'human interest' hook for the ready-meal-eating channel hopper. So why did Nina and her editors feel compelled to layer it on with a shovel? To boast of their 'exclusive'? To all but shout: 'Look! Dead bodies!'?

I honestly have no idea why, but it made me as mad as hell. And I had only just recovered my equilibrium from the night before when, in the most unfortunate - actually, I mean crass - bit of scheduling I can recall, the BBC decided to go ahead and screen Changing Rooms Goes to Boscastle.

The idea of this show must have seemed like a good one at the time. Well, sort of. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his 'team' of interior designers were to help restore some rooms of those whose properties in the Cornish village were destroyed by flash floods in August.

Personally, if my home had been wrecked beyond all recognition by a wave of mud, the last person in the world I would want to see hoving prissily into view (complete with silly Russian hat and aviator sunglasses) would be Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

But anyway, you can imagine how someone, somewhere, might have considered this a 'compelling' take on that worn-out staple, the makeover. Tears are often a feature of Changing Rooms but in Boscastle - oh, ring out those Christmas bells! - they would be virtually guaranteed.

That, though, was before the earthquake did its work. Post-Boxing Day, Changing Rooms Goes to Boscastle was about as shaming and self-indulgent as television can possibly be, particularly since it directly followed the Six O'Clock News . This is not to make light of the plight of the people of Boscastle. In some cases, they lost everything: homes, livelihoods, wedding photographs. I am sure they have had a horrible time.

Even so, in Boscastle no one was killed. Those who were trapped were easily winched to safety; those who were hurt were soon taken to hospital. All of them, I assume, were in possession of insurance policies which, in the fullness of time, paid them for what had been swept so ruthlessly away. So forgive me if their tears of joy at their shiny laminate floors and outsized lampshades left me more than usually unmoved.

I know I said that this is not the place for piety, but the truth of it is that this show, for all its faux Blitz spirit - marvel as neighbours work together! Gasp in wonderment as Anna Ryder Richardson dons her flowery wellies! - left me with a sense of what I can only describe as collective dishonour. And it felt hateful.

But as I clamber down from the spike on which I have been puritanically sitting ever since, do let me tell you about the rest of the week's television, which was a joy. Its theme: Englishness. Its entertainment value: high and certainly much better than yet another game of Pictionary/Trivial Pursuit/ Bait Your In-Laws.

First, My Dad's the Prime Minister . This is a sitcom, written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, which stars the itchingly good Robert Bathurst as a hapless yet control-freakish PM (aren't they all?) whose wife and children constantly take the piss out of him. It started off life as Sunday teatime viewing but has now been moved to prime time, and I cannot understand for the life of me why all my friends are not talking about it, because it is completely adorable.

In this episode, a dispute with the power workers and an off-message remark about Santa combined to make Christmas a disaster for the PM. 'It's just like the Blitz,' said his mother, as the first family munched dog treats (a mix-up at Tesco) by candlelight. 'Only then, we had a really good Prime Minister.'

My Dad's the Prime Minister does exactly what it says on the tin - it imagines what everyday life might be like behind the shiny black door. This is a beautifully simple conceit and a funny one. There is just something delightful about hearing the Prime Minister get called 'Saddo Daddo' by his children - 'This isn't nerd world, Dad, it's the kitchen' - or listening to him discuss the threatened electricity strike with his old-bag mother: 'I don't care what the man in the butcher's said. I know more about it than him!'

But my favourite moment in this episode came when Dillon, the PM's son, tried to get his father's word that this Christmas would be better than last. Cut to a home video of the family in a gloomy bedroom at Balmoral. The PM's wife, son and daughter are all shivering like greyhounds and look ashen-faced, having been woken at dawn by a piper. 'Look at the lovely Teasmade,' we hear the Prime Minister's wife say, tartly. 'And look at the lovely Tupperware box full of teabags.' Naked Britain was a documentary about the craze for nude charity calendars. There was something a bit twee about this film - watching big-bottomed lady golfers trying to be 'cheeky' is not my perfect night in - but it was saved by (and even as I am typing this, I'm laughing) Jill and her friends at the Sussex Spinners and Weavers.

Jill wanted to modernise the fuddy-duddy image of her hobby, so she decided that she and her fellow craftswomen would do a nude calendar. She took this very seriously indeed, even travelling on the bus sans knickers so as to avoid lines in the photos, and produced what she still regards as a thing of great beauty, featuring lots of lovely alpaca wool, a barn and several rather lumpy knitted hats.

Unfortunately, she made two big mistakes, the result of which is that she now owes the bank £15,000. First, Jill decided that profits were to go to the Rare Breed Survival Trust - i.e. weird-looking sheep - rather than a cancer charity. Not sexy, you see. Second, she left in too many nipples, which is even less sexy, apparently. The spinners' national body would have nothing to do with it.

Poor Jill. Her only hope now, financially speaking, is if maroon becomes the new black or scratchy the new soft. Still, at least she has some nice pictures to show her grandchildren.

Which brings me, finally, to Not Only But Always. Peter Cook was scratchy - you rubbed up against him at your peril. This film of his life, which took him from too-bright undergraduatedom to sodden old-ish age, was lovingly written and knowingly structured.

But it would have been nothing - nothing at all - without the performances of Rhys Ifans as Cook and Aidan McArdle as Dudley Moore, his sidekick, fall guy, rival and, at a push, friend.

The latter carried off the ridiculous wigs and awful suits he was required to wear with aplomb. But it was the former who mesmerised. This is not just TV reviewer-speak; he really did. How beautiful he looked, how sad and how cruel, his eyes like strange, milky marbles, his mouth a dictionary sneer.

I do not know, precisely, how much of this screenplay was based on actuality. But then, as Tom Stoppard once said: 'It may not be fact, but it's true.' When it comes to the news, all I want is fact, quiet and unembellished. But with a man's life, the nitty gritty - the hard stuff - must be drawn. Like blood, if necessary.

· Kathryn Flett is away