Britain's got scabs

Last night's TV reviewed: Embarrassing Bodies; Waking the Dead; Out of the Blue; Real Crime: Murder in Harvey Nicks; Britain's Youngest Grannies

The voiceover at the start of last night's Embarrassing Bodies (Channel 4) told us that a team of doctors would be crossing the country in a mobile clinic "leaving no orifice unprobed" and within moments of them arriving in Leeds it was clear that the voiceover wasn't kidding, as a camera took us on a voyage up the fundament of a woman called Pauline, with John Logie Baird and Lord Reith doubtless going varying shades of purple in the celestial Green Room.

When Baird became the first person to transmit a moving image on television, and Reith defined the broadcaster's mission as being to "inform, educate and entertain", it is safe to say that neither of those beetle-browed Scotsmen expected the new medium, after 80 years of progress, to whisk the nation up a middle-aged woman's back passage. On the other hand, I can't claim that the spectacle wasn't informative and educational, even if it left something to be desired, entertainment-wise. On balance, and I admit it's a close-run thing, give me Cannon and Ball.

Still, it was fascinating to watch people who in some cases had been reluctant to visit their GPs with sensitive fungal complaints quite cheerfully dropping their underwear with a Channel 4 camera crew in attendance. What a strange age this is, when a TV camera is considered less invasive than a doctor's speculum. I hope Pauline had given full and considered thought to the looks she's going to get next time she's shopping at Morrisons. Maybe she'll get a round of applause. I for one was certainly very pleased on her behalf that the Embarrassing Bodies team were able to reassure her that what she described with a shaky voice as "this thing that I have", a little plectrum of skin at the entrance of her anus, was nothing to worry about, and could be surgically removed with ease. Apparently, her thing had been preventing Pauline from entering sexual relationships. "These men, they want to explore everything and anything," she said. I couldn't help thinking that her real problem was her men, not her thing.

Maybe that's Leeds for you. I don't know. I do know, thanks to the voiceover, that Leeds has a population of 700,000, which means that 50,000 are suffering from constipation, and 350,000 will get piles at some point in their lives. If I remember my limericks correctly, Leeds is also the home of the young man who swallowed a packet of seeds, with the unfortunate result that within an hour his nose was a flower and his head was a riot of weeds. That's the wholesome version, anyway. Strangely, he didn't turn up at the Embarrassing Bodies clinic.

A woman called Rachel did. She had psoriasis sores all over her body, and was referred to a place in London, where she was successfully given ultra-violet light treatment. Another woman, called Alison, was worried about her vagina. Needless to say, we got a full and frank view. It looked all right to me, but what do I know? Like Pauline, Alison was told that minor surgery was the answer, and went away happy. Embarrassing Bodies, which continues every night until Thursday, is surprisingly uplifting. Never mind Britain's Got Talent. Get Ant and Dec to present, replace Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden with three doctors, call it "Britain's Got Scabs", and it could be a hit show for Saturday evenings.

The BBC will be cross with me for giving such astute advice to its rivals, especially at a time when it needs as many hits as it can get. One of them is Waking the Dead, which each week presents a body beyond the help even of the Embarrassing Bodies team. Last night, it was that of a decapitated soldier found in a shallow grave, part one of a story concluding this evening. It's a story that, in no particular order, features filial love, parental guilt, military discipline, gay cruising, Iraq, equine parasites and advanced putrefaction.

The difference between decent British and American TV drama, I sometimes think, is that our writers try a little too hard. The plots of Waking the Dead surely don't have to be quite as labyrinthine as they are, and they measure up poorly against the perfect simplicity and economy of the marvellous Mad Men, for example. I know they're different kinds of show, but in a way that's irrelevant. Drama should engage, not bamboozle.

Waking the Dead gets away with its fiendishly complicated plots largely on account of its fine cast, superbly led by Trevor Eve, although my favourite is Tara Fitzgerald as the pathologist, Dr Lockhart. When did pathologists start looking like Tara Fitzgerald? They used to look like Jack Klugman. Anyway, beavering away in her lab (note to writers: lab stands for laboratory, not labyrinth), she found soil deposits under the deceased's fingernails, containing eggs from a parasitic worm that inhabits a horse's anal regions. I wasn't at all sure why that was relevant. I was too busy hoping that Pauline from Leeds wasn't watching.

Talking about the BBC, Out of the Blue (BBC1) has been hailed – or maybe marketed – as the new Neighbours. If it’s going to run as long, then yesterday’s first episode does need to be followed by least 5,399 more. Still, at this admittedly early stage, the programme is looking quite promising.

Although a BBC commission, plenty of the classic Aussie-soap trademarks are certainly in place – including a shamelessly gorgeous cast. But there are other elements too. The BBC has acknowledged the show has “a Friends quality” (as well it might, given that one of the characters is a kooky blonde who writes rubbish songs). A more unexpected influence, though, seems to be all those recent American shows which spin out their thriller storylines for as long as humanly possible – and sometimes longer.

Before the opening credits, Gabby (Sophie Katinis) explained in voice-over how she’d organised the reunion of a bunch of people who’d been best friends until her 21st birthday – when, in some undisclosed way, “everything went wrong”. Nine years on, sadly, the chances of a cheerful resolution didn’t sound great either. “In less than 48 hours,” Gabby continued, “one of us would be dead – and someone close to us, maybe even one of us, would be the killer.”

And with that, it was Aussie-soap business as usual for a while. The reunited mates had barbecues in the Sydney sunshine, set up love triangles and walked around in their swimwear. They also received welcomes of varying warmth from their families – with the frostiest going to Philby (Dylan Landre), who’d returned from London with a pregnant girlfriend. (“Take that cow you knocked up and get out of here,” suggested his brother.) Yet, because we knew there’d soon – or eventually – be a murder, all of these things were cunningly able to appear much more significant and intriguing than they’d have done otherwise. Presumably, it won’t take 5,000 episodes to find out who was killed and who did it. (Even the makers of Lost couldn’t pull that off.) Nonetheless, as a gimmick to lure us in to a new soap, this one seems pretty neat to me.

Real Crime: Murder in Harvey Nicks (ITV1) told the harrowing story of 22-year-old Clare Bernal, who in 2005 was shot dead in the store where she worked by Michal Pech. After she’d ended their three-week relationship, Pech stalked Clare for over a month, once threatening to kill her if she reported him. Even so, Clare did – but, while on bail, Pech returned to his native Slovakia, bought the gun he’d shoot her with, and brought it back on the ferry. The programme added a few unwelcome TV touches to the stalking part – hiring an actor to look as mad as Pech, and endlessly repeating the death-threat scene. Oddly, it was less excitable about any mistakes the authorities might have made. “No-one could have predicted Pech was planning murder,” it informed us firmly – even though, armed with hindsight, a couple of psychologists last night claimed that all the danger signs were there. (Unarmed with hindsight, a psychologist at the time had examined Pech, decided he had no mental problems and diagnosed a bad case of love.)

In the end, the documentary was saved by Clare’s mother Tricia, whose grief didn’t stop her from being impressively clear-eyed about where blame was and wasn’t due. With two other bereaved mothers, she’s also set up a centre in Croydon that works with stalking victims and tries to bring together the kind of evidence that, in Clare’s case, emerged only after she was dead. If Real Crime helps to fulfil Tricia’s hope for similar centres elsewhere, then it’ll have been a lot more worthwhile than seemed likely for much of the time last night.

Over on the other side we learn Britain's Youngest Grannies (BBC3) are very young - 35, 36, and one became a nan at 32. Not that any of them behave like grannies. There's no knitting, no rocking chairs, no blue rinses. I doubt this lot smell of biscuits, or anything worse. No, Tara's out clubbing in Norwich, snogging a 21-year-old. He doesn't seem to have a problem with it. He says she's totally a GILF.

Pauline became a gran at 34 when her 15-year-old daughter Leanne gave birth to Cassie. Now they're off out dancing together, in tiny skirts. Not Cassie, she'll have to wait for a couple of years, she's only four. They're from the north-east; it's part of the culture up there. Tracey in Runcorn is another clubbing granny. She's got two teenage girls - Layla, who has her own little girl, and Kaye, who's got one on the way. It's hard to keep up, I know. It is for Tracey, too; she's having all their names tattooed on her very un-gran-like tummy, in case she forgets. Trouble is, the rate her girls are popping them out, she's going to run out of tummy room quite soon.

They're all lovely really. OK, there are a few regrets about the place, maybe it would have been better to wait a tiny bit. But they all work as families. And this is a surprisingly uplifting film. Maybe Britain isn't such a bad place after all.