And lastly, like Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan impressions in the '80s, everyone thinks they can do a take-off of a south Dublin rich kid, but hardly anyone can do anything funny with it.

What could have really done for Dan and Becs would have been if it tried on the sort of extremes of character that work so well for Ross O'Carroll-Kelly on the page but could easily be a hammy disaster on screen. But it doesn't - it's well observed and well written, beautifully acted, and doesn't at all go over the top. Even the Becs character (Holly White) - your classic southside airhead, who does all her bits to camera from behind the wheel of her car, while driving round and round Cabinteely Park by the looks of it - is believable.

The Dan character - played by David Coffey, who writes and directs - has enough self-awareness to recognise that his on-off girlfriend "has that whole 'Oh-mygod, Dublin 4' thing going on"; he also has long hair, wears beads, and has "never watched a game of rugby in [his] life". Which might have stuck out like a self-conscious attempt to be novel if the programme wasn't funny. But it is, or at least, I think it is. To be honest, I was too busy being shocked at how crap it wasn't that I was numb to any of the jokes.

But I could see enough to know I'll be laughing the second time.

No Béarla had a very good joke right at the start. It's a travel show with a twist - presenter Manchán Magan (who seems to be everywhere suddenly, which is his job, I suppose) tries to get around Ireland speaking only Irish to people. Anyway, the joke was that a caption came up at the start saying, in English: "We apologise for the loss of subtitles".

Great - if you're like me, you'd have been totally lost from that point, grappling to understand Magan as he quizzed touristindustry workers and public officials as gaeilge. Still, nice programme - Dublin looked fantastic, on whatever gloriously sunny day they managed to catch it on. Next week, Magan's off to Belfast, although it could easily be Sligo for all I understood.

The first episode of The Great Escape took off to the south of France. On paper, this looks like the sort of thing that will make you feel inadequate about your new-year new regime as you observe ordinary Irish families giving it all up for a fresh start abroad. Ger Cassidy's story begins like the film Field of Dreams - he decides to spend his redundancy money building a pitch 'n' putt course in France, figuring, I guess, that if he builds it, they will come, despite there being virtually no history of pitch 'n' putt in that country. Soon however, the story turns into Jean de Florette - a low-lying water table, and red tape which prevents him procuring any water to irrigate his land, mess things up. So frustrating did the experience seem and so unexpectedly miserable did the Dordogne look (it was like Ireland, with more rain), that I found myself not wanting Ger and his family's new life at all. I envied them their guts, though, in making such a brave and liberating decision.

You Are What You Eat: Gillian Moves In is also designed to make you feel terrible about yourself in these glum months, although those feelings are easily sublimated into terrible thoughts about its shrill bitch of a host within two minutes' reacquaintance with her.

The gimmick with this series is that self-styled healthy eating guru McKeith's guinea pigs must actually live with her (in her own house) for the duration of their 'treatment'. That's on top of her other gimmick, which carries over from the last series. Well, everybody needs one, and McKeith remains Queen Scat, obsessed as always with what squeezes out of other people's bottoms. Seriously, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's house must have looked like this:

she has a poster on her wall with all the different turd types in the world on it. She also has a largerthan-actual-size (you'd hope) plastic (you'd hope) shit stuck on the wall of her bathroom. Clearly the woman is mad and should not be trusted with experimenting with anyone's physiology.

Reviewed Dan and Becs Monday and Tuesday, RT�?2 No Béarla Sunday, TG4 The Great Escape Monday, RT�?1 You Are What You Eat: Gillian Moves In Tuesday, C4