Panorama: A Fight to the Death BBC1
What Hutton Won't Tell Us C4
Newsnight BBC2
Mad About Alice BBC1
Little Britain BBC2

Of all channels, only the beloved BBC either needed or would have dared to give over such a big chunk of Wednesday night's prime time to such a (de)pressingly Byzantine slice of current affairs as A Fight to the Death.

This self-flagellatory Panorama, preceding, if not preempting, the Hutton report, had been praised in advance for its alleged lack of controlfreakiness, notably the fact that two of the BBC's most interested parties - Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davis, had kept their distance - were sitting down to watch it at precisely the same time as all the other interested parties: BBC governors, say, or Cabinet Ministers, MPs, journalists, politics students and even those (perhaps, realistically, rather few) ordinary members of the public who were not otherwise seduced by the charms of The Bill, Relocation, Relocation, Bob Monkhouse's Comedy Heroes, a hot Radox bath or a chilled glass of Sauvignon.

That's not to say this was not an excellent Panorama, inasmuch as reporter John Ware left no turn unstoned in his pursuit of the capital T-truth, but the BBC was, of course, in a singular position to be able to forgo decent ratings to indulge itself in what amounted to taking care of business - and this film (which included the pay-off line: 'Unlike the Government, the BBC has admitted it made some mistakes') was extremely self-serving, even as it strove to be objective.

Call me cynical - and on this subject is there anybody left who isn't? - but the programme's self-flagellatory schtick (tough on Gilligan, tough on the causes of Gilligan) ensured that, come Thursday, both Ware and the corporation were basking in good reviews for their scrupulous journalistic approach.

But this failed to distract from the fact that the film eschewed mere navel-gazing in favour of intense navel lint-gathering, even while the split-screens made it look like a remake of the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, but without the satisfying resolution. At nearly 90 minutes, this was a lot of documentary for a bleak Wednesday night in January.

'The David Kelly Affair' could certainly have done with Piers Brosnan and without the mournful, synthesised strings, though these were, retrospectively, preferable to the music deployed to shock us into awed silence during C4's What Hutton Won't Tell Us, which was stuffed with so many tum-ti-tum snares and Whump! Schluuuumph! Boof! WHOOSH! sound effects - kinda drum and military base, if you will - that the casual viewer could have mistaken it for a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

'Scrumptious' Sam Kiley, Milk Tray-licious reporter, starred as Our Man in a Black Polo Neck and Designer Flak Jacket, striding busily around what looked like the set of Spooks asking emphatically uppercase questions such as 'Was the War Legal?', 'Did Tony Blair Mislead the British Public?' or 'Was He Misled by the Intelligence He Received?' Meanwhile, the director and editors had lots of fun with their rifle-sight cameras and juddering computer screens, blurred images of Remembrance Day poppies, pictures of Alastair Campbell looking like Satan and, inevitably, not-quite-soft-focus-enoughfrankly footage of Clare Short and Robin Cook. I'm hoping these two will see the sense in teaming up as Short and Cook, a sort of Pete'n' Dud without the laughs.

'The real reason [the Government] were keen to take Britain to war,' explained Cook, looking increasingly elder-statesmanlike, 'was not because they thought Saddam was a threat but because they wanted to demonstrate to George Bush that we were a reliable ally.' Which, because it is the kind of thing ordinary people who haven't ever wanted to be Cabinet Ministers say to each other over dinner every night of the week, is somehow both reassuring and concerning in pretty much equal measure.

I was also very taken by the contributions of Karen Kwiatkowski, a former US Defence department analyst, who, post-9/11, witnessed a shady bunch of operators move into the Pentagon office opposite hers: 'Regime change and occupation [of Iraq] was a hard sell,' she explained briskly, but the job of the Harry Potterishsounding Office of Special Plans (for the purposes of comedy now to be known as The Office) was to 'cherrypick intelligence for propaganda'. And even if few of us are any longer remotely surprised by these sort of revelations, it doesn't mean we can't still feel disappointed. Though madly hyperactive, What Hutton Wont Tell Us was very watchable too.

'Next week is pretty much make or break for your prime ministership, isn't it?' Jeremy Paxman asked the PM in a flagrant attempt to sex-up last week's Newsnight's tuition-fees special debate.

'It's going to be difficult,' admitted Tone, whose smile, redefining wry, looked as if it might have been commissioned for the occasion from Matt Groening. 'I can't remember the last week that was my most difficult week - I think it was the week before last - but they come round pretty regularly, as you know. But that's part of the job.'

'Are you sure that by the end of the week you're still going to be PM?' leered 'Sideshow Bob' Paxman.

'Well, I'm going to do my best, aren't I?'

The audience's polite tittering outweighed the shouts of 'That's not bloody good enough, actually' by, ooh, about a 100-to-none, but I can't be alone, surely, in finding it extraordinary how much, and even at this late stage of the game, the man so badly needs to be liked.

If tuition fees don't, the Hutton report could do for Blair, of course, though I can't imagine either will quite see him off (and nor does Blair: 'I believe I will survive it, yes,' he told Sideshow). But even if it is curtains for the PM by the end of this week, you'd presumably not see many public demonstrations of distress. Are we suffering from Hutton fatigue, war fatigue or Blair fatigue, or all three?

Or is it just the fact that it's January and we're hibernating. And if so, could political apathy be explained away by our long, dark nights and cold-snapped days? Sadder than Sad, eh?

But perhaps not quite as sad as Mad About Alice, a lamentable new sitcom starring tabloid favourites Amanda ('Used to be married to Les Dennis but had an affair with Neil Morrissey') Holden and Jamie ('Used to present kids' TV, went out with Joely Richardson, allegedly had sex in a prostitute's dungeon') Theakston.

Despite the stars being pretty'n'perky singletons whose personal lives continue to overshadow their professional CVs, somebody obviously thought it smart to cast them as a young, divorced, middle-class (doctor, interior designer) couple with a small, cute son, and the kind of harsh studio lighting in the overstyled kitchen which screams Brit sitcom. If Mad About Alice (rubbish title. Would like to be a sort of hipper My Family but is hampered from achieving its ambition because it's written by cyborgs) had starred either Holden or Theakston, it might have stood a chance, but together they effectively cancel each other out.

Given the right material, an actor should be able to transcend their tabloid persona (let's face it, the entire cast of EastEnders does it all the time), but in this case it's just too much to ask. Not because Holden and Theako aren't as good as can be expected under the circumstances (after her bitchy turn in Cutting It, Holden is likable and unaffected here), but because they're carrying the terrible burden of a generically dreadful British Sitcom on their slim shoulders. Such was the level of comedy desperation, indeed, that the pay-off to one joke relied on seeing Holden in her smalls. A cheap trick, but probably a necessary one.

In short, despite its Christmas-cracker comic premise and cutesy casting, there is not a single reason for Mad About Alice to exist - and I'm afraid that even includes John Gordon Sinclair as Alice's 'business' partner. Meanwhile, the show's unforgivably smug and chirpy theme tune duet will have made anybody over the age of six yearn for some really meaty current affairs.

Finally, in the last episode of Matt Lucas and David Walliams's big hit, Little Britain, poor gay Daffyd, of the Bacofoil playsuits and arid love life, discovered that not only was barmaid Myfanwy having an affair with a woman called Rhiannon, but that she'd met her new girlfriend at the pub landlady's 'lesbian pottery class'. 'You're not gay!' he cried desperately: 'I'm the gay in this village.' Heartbreaking.