My Nose and Me C4
RHS Chelsea Flower Show BBC1/BBC2
The Beckhams' World Cup Charity Party ITV1
Old C4
Working with Dinosaurs C4
Dossa and Joe BBC2
24 BBC2
Without that infamous nose - or rather without the lack of it - it is safe to assume that nobody would be making hour-long terrestrial TV documentaries about the former EastEnders actress Danniella Westbrook. She has been promising to have the nose fixed for ages: originally she was going to get a new colonna (not - tut-tutted Danniella - a septum) in time for her Christmas wedding, then she was apparently going to get it fixed shortly afterwards. Presumably the documentary crew wanted to include the arrival of her new nose in their film, My Nose and Me, but the deadline came and went and no new nose is, frankly, no news. Danniella talks good therapy-talk. She's bright and articulate but, at a very weary-looking 28, sometimes comes across like Methuselah's auntie. She also has the telltale brisk and business-like tone which hints that, for all the therapy, she's not entirely in touch with her emotions. Yet, being an actress, she can easily cry on cue. After having been a cocaine addict for more than a decade and throughout two pregnancies, blowing a quarter of a million quids- worth in the process, she claims to have been clean for more than a year now - though this doesn't seem quite long enough to be celebrating with a tell-all documentary and a set of very cheesy, just-this-side-of-tasteless portraits executed by Jordan's favourite photographer. Now a Home Counties housewife married to a self-made millionaire (and recovering alcoholic) called Kevin, living in an big half-timbered executive home (in the advertisements they're always 'homes', these places, never merely 'houses') with oddly middle-aged interior decor (all swags and ruches) and busy on the school run, Westbrook looks the very model of neatly aspirational, mail-order catalogue, Middle-English mumdom. Except when she admits that: 'Once every two months I wake up and think, "Bloody hell, it's boring innit?"' which has to be a worrying sign. When the nose is eventually fixed and if she subsequently fails to land herself a part in, say, a third series of Footballers' Wives (she'd be very good in that), who's still going to be interested in Danniella? Possibly not even Danniella. When she finally gets one I really hope she keeps her new nose clean. Last week I watched a lot of the BBC's lovely live coverage from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show '... and that's because you're seven-and-a-half-months pregnant,' a black-fingered ('I only have to be in the same room as a plant and it dies') friend observed when I 'fessed up. But is watching a flower show on the telly really evidence of advanced hormonal idiocy? I'd say probably only if it also reduces the viewer to tears, and, happily, I just about held it together even when the Prince of Wales was clearly cheated out of winning something even shinier than a silver medal for his healing garden. One evening, Charlie Dimmock introduced us to the nation's foremost orchid cultivator: 'Very trendy now, orchids, aren't they?' she asked, standing in front of something that might have been a sex toy designed by Philippe Starck. I dislike those hallucinogenic hybrid orchids that look as if they should be nibbled by the giant bunnies in the Teletubbies' garden, but there was plenty of evidence of orchidaceous hipness at 'Beckingham Palace' last week, during the televised preparations for Posh and Becks's World Cup/NSPCC Japanese-themed charity party - in pursuit of stylistic excellence, or possibly just lairy overkill, Posh had bought every single orchid in the country that wasn't headed for Chelsea. I really wish I hadn't been quite as riveted by this programme - after all, we didn't even get to see inside the 'Palace' (about which, incidentally, I have recently had a series of intense dreams). But there was still some thing sweet about watching the easy-going, perma-grinning, woolly hat-sporting Beckham limping around the grounds of his delightfully flash neo-Georgian pile inspecting the complex works-in-progress undertaken by legions of party-planning staff - The Edwardian Country House with knobs on and nobs offside. Still, even with all those squillions of orchids, an auction hosted by Graham Norton and a guest list that included the Rocket Man himself, the party itself looked surprisingly damp-squibish. Perhaps parties can in fact be too well-planned, in which case next time Posh and Becks might like to consider a BYO buffet accessorised by geraniums. But it wasn't all floral froth and nasal nonsense documentary-wise last week. While Britain is clearly a great place to live if you collect orchids or are mates with Elton John, it really has to be one of the lousiest places on earth in which to be old and poor and lonely. There really wasn't much to criticise about Channel 4's Old, even if one objected to the self-conscious Go-On-Give-Us-A-Bafta stylistic flourishes, such as the spectacularly pompous auteur-style claim that this was: 'A Kate Blewett and Brian Woods Investigation', or the rolling statistics which rammed home every miserable point that had already been perfectly well made visually, or the juxtaposition of 'Mr Sandman' with images of pensioners nodding off in their chairs in an old folks' home. No, these are just quibbles, really, because when you listened to Bagpuss-faced Edie recounting the details of the physical and emotional abuse she and her late husband had received at the hands of her son-in-law ('We were beaten... I was thrown into the toilet and urinated on... ') from the sanctuary of her local authority care home (somewhere she would have enjoyed her final days if it hadn't been just about to close), even the most irritating flourishes didn't amount to very much when the facts are that we despise and resent our old people, treating them like lost baggage, and if this continues we'll probably finish up with the old age we collectively deserve. Then again, we could do a lot worse than the delightful 74-year-old widow Dorothy Morton, star of the flippantly titled Working With Dinosaurs, in which (surprise, surprise!) it was proven that age need be no barrier to success - at least if you are blessed with a nice two-bed bungalow, a supportive family, good health and a fully functioning set of mental faculties. Dorothy charmed her classmates on a six-week Britannia Airlines course, making a new best friend of 20-year-old roommate Jodie, proving herself fearless when sliding down the emergency escape chute, and unsurprisingly skilful when it came to 'the customer side of things'. 'I know everything about this 757,' said Dot as the course finished, 'from now on she'll be my baby.' At the end of the programme - which had been both pedestrian and predictable even as it raised the odd smile - there was an unexpectedly revealing moment when Dorothy viewed old colour cine film of herself on holiday in Martinique, larking about leggily in a swimming costume and looking as though she was born to ask the question 'Chicken or fish?'. Forty-two years later, she managed it on her debut round-trip to Tenerife. Better late than never, eh Dorothy? Is the 'Dossa' in BBC2's Dossa and and Joe, short for Dorothy, I wonder? It sounds about right - a typical Aussie affectionate diminutive. Anyway, it's only week two of Caroline Aherne's sitcom about a retired couple who aren't sure if they can stomach the future together, but, as with The Royle Family, the structure and pace are unwavering. Not that that matters, because Dossa and Joe is already proving itself to be a work of quiet, melancholic brilliance. It's about ageing, of course, but it's also about the crushing loneliness of surviving inside a relationship past its sell-by date. It is also beautifully written and shockingly well acted, particularly during the flashback scenes in which Joe shares workplace inanities over a game of cards with his former colleagues. Too bleak to be laugh-out-loud funny, it proves that Aherne's ear continues to be uniquely attuned to the undramatic but revealing nuances of relationships. Having read that she's recently split up with her Aussie boyfriend, I hope it's not this extraordinary skill that hinders her in having relationships rather than writing them. BBC2's excellent import 24 just gets better. All week, for example, I have been vividly haunted by the knowledge that (according to Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer) inserting a wet towel down the throat and into the stomach of one's torture victim will result in digestion, at which point it is necessary to yank it back out of the mouth, thus removing the victim's stomach lining. Eeek! It's almost as tense and thrilling as the Chelsea Flower Show.