There is food involved, so Heston Blumenthal's addictive In Search of Perfection (BBC2) is nominally a cookery show, except that Blumenthal himself, below, gives the game away by saying: 'I want you to be able to attempt this at home.'

While I can think of few things my four-year-old son would find more fun than aerating chocolate with the aid of a Dyson, as seen during last week's Black Forest gateau-fest (though eating the results while sliding down a water chute dressed as a pirate may come close), I know this is one of the many things in life I'm never going to 'attempt', at least while Betty Crocker remains in business.

None the less, I'm hoping Blumenthal's oeuvre heralds a new wave of super-aspirational TV shows. How about Lucian Freud hosting a revamped Vision On or Stephen Hawking inviting Blue Peter viewers to come up with their string theories?