Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Ale Flagons

Last night's TV reviewed: Heist; Those Were the Days; James Bond: the True Story; The Apprentice; Property Ladder

BBC4 is definitely a great channel – but when it decides to let its high-minded hair down, the results can be distinctly mixed. Showing the old Batman series again is clearly an inspired move. On the other hand, last night’s Heist proved an embarrassingly desperate attempt to demonstrate that Hey, Studying the Middle Ages Can Be Fun. In striving to add a spot of comedy to the channel’s Medieval season, this true-life drama unwisely mixed dubious historical research with rather half-hearted slapstick, toilet gags by the bowlful, and the framework of a Guy Ritchie movie. "Edward I: unacknowledged pioneer of administrative reform or 'slap-headed ponce'? Discuss, using your knowledge of contemporary documents to back up your arguments." Or, alternatively, don't bother with the historical documents at all but just have it large with a lairy crime caper that appeared to have done most of its research at the nearest Blockbuster, rather than in the National Archives.

Heist was a bizarre experiment; taking a real event as its source – the 1302 attempted theft of Edward I's personal treasure from a vault in Westminster Abbey- and dramatising it in partially modern parlance. Kris Marshall, currently dropping his towel as the younger boyfriend in the BT ads, played Dick Puddlecote, who assembled around him a team of snaggle-toothed co-conspirators that felt suspiciously indebted to 1970s sitcoms. (As it turned out, the thick Irishman got on well with the mincing homosexual, but not the money-obsessed Jew.) "Oi'm the biggest criminal genius you've never heard of," announced Puddlecote, introducing himself to us from a gridiron in hell, as an energetic demon prepared to shove a heated pitchfork up him. Despite his circumstances, he appeared remarkably sanguine. He was untroubled by the flames licking around his naked body and prepared to be ruefully philosophical about the misadventure that had brought him so low. He explained his back story: a disastrous business venture in Flanders, a failed attempt to obtain compensation from Edward I, and then the decision to seek redress by a more direct route. "This," he said, "is the story of how I got my revenge on the pisspot king... with a little help from my friends."

Puddlecote didn't have a lot of respect for Edward, who had, he said, "two great loves: kicking arse and raising money to kick more arse". But he was impressed by the fact that Edward stored a lot of his money and plate in Westminster Abbey. Recruiting an abbey gatekeeper called Guillame de Palays and a sacristan called Adam de Warfield, Dick hatched a plan to infiltrate the abbey walls with a cartload of wine tuns, one of which would contain two accomplices who could burrow into the vault from an adjacent cemetery. Essentially, it was "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Ale Flagons", complete with jokey police mugshots of the principals, heavy metal on the soundtrack, and a wearying dependency on the verb "swiving". Though the robbery started well, the gang was dismayed to find that they'd broken through directly beneath the monks' lavatory. "Doesn't make a difference," said Dick, "just means it's less of a pleasant working environment." Less pleasant, that is, than tunnelling through decomposing bodies.

I think it's entirely possible that Heist won't have appealed to historical purists. When Dick visited John of Newmarket, who he hoped would fence the goods, he found him reclining on a medieval lounger by his pool, quaffing wine from a goblet with a little paper umbrella in it. And even historical impurists may have hankered for a little more hard fact in among the "cack" jokes and the cinematic pranks. The humour came from the gutter, except they didn't have gutters in those days, so it ran over the cobbles in the middle of the street, obvious and stinking. Subtle this ain't. Tiny traces of real history remained in the thing – like crumbs in the beard of a messy eater – but the cheery indifference to anachronism meant that you would only have noticed if you already had a grasp of the basic details. There was the odd good joke, though. "What are these?" asked one of Dick's accomplices opening an ornate box containing what looked like decaying cigars. "St Peter's fingers," Dick replied. Accomplice's eyebrows lifted in comprehension, then dipped again. "But there's 12 of them..."

For their part, the makers served up every possible signifier of a romp and/or caper – including little cartoons, speeded-up film and wilfully jarring music choices. And, when the chips were really down, there was always a cesspit for the cast to fall into. The trouble was that this whole approach seemed to reflect not so much a naturally playful imagination as a teeth-gritted determination to appear wacky at all costs. Even so, the programme could never quite bring itself to dispense with the scholarly captions. (“Dick’s sanctuary was violated within 24 hours, by the warders of Newgate Gaol.”) It also kept the hilarity coming during the torture scenes – which suggests it didn’t entirely get the idea of humour anyway. No wonder that the overall effect was like watching a group of normally stern teachers doing their doomed best to put on a funny sketch at an end-of-term concert.

Overlooked historical detail is also the point of Those Were the Days, a new ITV3 series that knits red-letter days from 20th-century history together with memories of more local resonance. So, while 20 July 1969 will figure in most timelines as the day man first landed on the Moon, it also marks the day on which Ron Hill took his first marathon win and Pat Wheeldon won the Miss British Isles beauty competition. In this case, private memories and the public event inevitably became entangled, such was the public excitement about the Moon landings. The band Thunderclap Newman, coasting on their first and only chart-topping hit, found their evening gig interrupted by the venue manager coming on stage to give periodic updates on Apollo 11's progress.

It's a good idea, one that restores an intriguing edge of polyphony to television's usually one-note treatment of the recent past. It reminds you that a lot of other things were happening on that day and that in the case of some of the people they were happening to, such as a group of Portsmouth residents arrested and imprisoned for protesting against an entrance fee for a local park, they loomed rather larger than one giant leap for mankind. But at an hour long, Those Were the Days stretches the notion a lot further than it can comfortably go. It was fun hearing about Ron Hill's 1969 version of marathon carbo-loading – a pre-race diet of porridge oats, three marmalade butties and a slice of his wife's fruit cake – but most contributors were beginning to run out of things to say by the time the second ad break came round.

James Bond: the True Story (Five) was infinitely better than last week’s Indiana Jones: the True Story – largely because much of it seemed true. Admittedly, there was still that weird reluctance to believe a fiction writer might make anything up. Nonetheless, with some serious Ian Fleming experts on hand to keep it in line, the programme was gradually forced to abandon its quest to find which individual was “the real James Bond”. As a happy result, it then concentrated instead on noting some genuine parallels between certain aspects of Fleming’s life and certain aspects of Bond’s – while still leaving room for such factors as imagination and commercial nous.

It also threw in plenty of nice, if fairly random facts about both the books and movies. That famous Aston Martin, we learnt, was a suggestion by a reader, who persuaded Fleming that Bond’s original Bentley wasn’t cool enough. A well-deserved bow was given to Ken Wallis, who built and flew the gyrocopter in the film of You Only Live Twice – and who, at 92, still flies them. Of course, the programme did get a bit bogged down when it came to Bond’s treatment of women, not sure whether or how to justify it. In the end, it duly settled for the line that the tough women in the recent films have been “more realistic” – rather than, say, a different fantasy for a different time.

Ah, Child Genius (Channel 4), the show that has been following a group of little prodigies around since 2005 - like Seven Up, only with a higher IQ score. This year, three of them turn 13. So what happens when genius hits adolescence? Oh dear. Young Michael has run away from home. Dante has locked himself in his room and smokes skunk all day, and Aimee is currently in a young-offenders institution for repeated binge-drink and happy-slapping offences. Not really. That'll be the 2010 show. No, Aimee is composing competitively. And after the success of his Croydon trilogy, Michael is currently working on his fourth novel. I know it's really the Corydon (ancient Greek for shepherd) trilogy, Michael, and it's rooted in mythology with references to Homer (not Simpson, the other one) all over the place. But I'm calling it the Croydon series, all right? Michael's also learning Anglo Saxon. And Dante - the child, not Michael's favourite writer: keep up - is having a brain scan. Help, is there a problem? No, it turns out Dante's fine. Just very, very clever. He ends up explaining the results of the scan to the brain expert.

These children provoke mixed feelings. Fascination, of course. Plus a certain amount of horror, and a lot of sympathy. There's something very tragic about being so clever that it's impossible to have friends of the same age. Even adults are intimidated by this lot. It looks very lonely, being a genius. Aimee, the musician, has the biggest problems in this department, I think, because there's a huge gulf between her and her own family. Her parents are proud of her, of course, but she complains that they aren't very intellectual, and tells her mother to go away because she's interrupting her train of thought. Mr Kwan, her dad, doesn't even like classical music very much. Aimee's like a cuckoo chick, born into the wrong nest. Mr and Mrs Kwan cherish and nurture her, and bring her worms, but she's turning into a monster they can't really understand.

Next stop The Apprentice (BBC One) where, just because all her fellow contestants hate her so much, and because her presence on the show seems to be one wonderful error on the part of the Universe, I hereby enshrine the Lucinda Appreciation Society. Last night, she even won over the show’s scariest male. Lee (the bellowing rottweiler) McQueen was so moved by her “cool, calm and collected” leadership that he showered her with hugs and kisses – instead of bellowing at a volume akin to the “phone man” on Trigger Happy TV. Indeed, for a stretch this was the most functional, and therefore most boring, episode of this series. Both teams did their jobs professionally. For some time, there were no personal attacks or meltdowns. If you had ironing and chores to do, you could multitask rather than, utterly engrossed, burn holes in shirts.

Claire seemed to be a woman transformed as team leader. (Well, that’s what Sir Alan said at the end, in a self-congratulatory way after his ringing admonishment of last week. We’ll see . . .) “Maybe I should have learnt to keep my gob shut from day one,” Claire said, to which I imagined a whole nation of Apprentice-watchers nodding vigorous assent. Both teams had to make ice-cream, under the auspices of two farms, to sell to bars and shops. Any laughs – Michael Sophocles tried and failed to trial his team’s ice-cream on a stroppy yoga class – were fleeting. Deals were struck, money was made, good flavours created (avocado and chilli, toffee apple). It was dull, except for the growing realisation that Alex is vile. He spent most of the hour bitching and whining in a blue hairnet: “It’s my duty to make ice-cream under extreme pressure.” Oooh, get her.

Lucinda, traditionally going off on one about computers or being victimised, was brisk, albeit in another strange hat. “I don’t believe you have to be a bitch in business to succeed,” she said – though it’s a plus here. This week’s emerging meanie was Jennifer, who wound herself up into such a state of excitement over doing what she was supposed to do, ie, selling (“I can’t believe I did that!”) that it, in turn, wound up her teammate Lindi (“I felt more of a team manager than Lucinda”). On the other team, the hideous Jenny was also crowing derangedly: “We kept up the momentum against all the odds!”

In the boardroom, all the professionalism melted away. Claire won and cried. Lucinda, in that odd way of hers, set off a bomb and looked confused when the sky fell in as a result. She told Jennifer that Helene thought her a snake. Oh Lucinda, you wanted to cry, you had won round Helene by being a good team manager and now – as Helene’s face of thunder implied – she just thinks that you’re a mad bag again. Sir Alan fired Lindi and her alarming eye make-up. This was unconvincing from a business point of view: she’d done more than adequately, but hadn’t really been great television. Back at the house, Helene was furious with the insouciant Lucinda; and Jennifer queried whether she was “cold”. The silent response of the assembled implied a collective “You betcha”. How many shirts were ruined in that moment, I wonder.

Finally, I don't know when Property Ladder (Channel 4) was filmed. I'm going to guess, based on the trees and plants in the gardens. I reckon Robert's four-month cottage development in Cambridgeshire began in November or December. So it neatly coincided with the death-plunge in Britain's property prices. And guess what? Robert lost £30,000. Admittedly a lot of this has to do with Robert being a bloody idiot; he doesn't just fall into every hole, he leaps into them like a lemming, even though poor Sarah Beeney begs him not to. But some of the loss has to do with the fact that right now isn't the best time to go into property development. Perhaps they really should rename the show Property Snake. My other little problem with Property Ladder is that they employ whirling dervishes as camera operators. Round and round we go - Robert, his cottage, the other house, the garden, everything is spinning. The whole experience is like having an extended waltzer ride with Sarah. Not that one of those wouldn't be lovely, but it definitely makes you dizzy.