The BBC's Jeremy Paxman can usually be found in the drawing rooms of the British public, discussing the affairs of the day, bemoaning troubles in the colonies and barking at parliamentarians, with a louche swagger, ruddy face, and smirking stiff upper lip. Give him a large moustache, a penchant for underage prostitutes and a post-prandial brandy and he'd be the archtypical Victorian gent.

So he's perfect to present The Victorians, a programme which examines the social changes in industrial, colonial Britain as depicted in the art of the time. As presented by Paxman, these painters may not have been rewriting art history like their European counterparts, but they were the equivalent of the newspaper leader and comment writers of their day, with, on one side, little-Britain propagandists painting the official ideals of home, work and family, and on the other, campaigning reporters examining the "seedy underbelly" (I'd love, for once, to see a programme about "a glossy overbelly").

Now, you'd need to have been under a rock not to realise the Victorians had a seedy underbelly, given there have been so many programmes in recent years about 19th century British dandies, pornographers and sex-explorers. Actually, I can't imagine how the British managed to run an empire at all with all those sexy hi-jinks. It seems to me that we could have got them to leave Ireland in 1870 if we'd simply distracted them with a shapely table leg or a rock that looked like a bosom. But The Victorians is much more than a look at the Victorian perv problem. Paxman examines how Victorian culture-makers created the notions of the family we have today, and also gave us the tools to dissect and interrogate those images. He shows us a world in which Mrs Beeton prescribed the perfect home environment, childhood and womanhood were sanctified, and yet where there was one prostitute for every 25 men, and infanticide was rife.

And the historical details Paxman chooses to demonstrate this duality are intriguing – the marital life of Queen Victoria herself; the secret nudie photos of confirmed family man Linley Sanbourne; the paintings of William Powell Frith who depicted touching scenes of family life aided by the fact he had two families; and the importance of the Liverpool Anatomical Museum in the fight against syphilis and sexual degeneracy. "The face of an old bachelor – a confirmed onanist," read an archivist from a book. "He became idiotic and rapidly sank into a second childhood. What a fearful account he will have to give of himself on the judgement day!" (This, it turns out, wasn't a description of Paxman, but that of a sick old Victorian man). And all the while, images of cuckolded husbands, deceived wives, and sad knowing children are juxtaposed with warm and fuzzy paintings of smiling Victorian families. It was intriguing, perplexing and sad.

But there's also a disturbing subtext running through this and other recent documentaries about British history, and that's that the programme makers' admiration for the achievements of the Victorians at least rivals their concern for the victims in the ruins. There's a suggestion that all historical pain is in some way justified because it got us here (the glittering, meritocratic present). Indeed, each episode just stops short of ending with Paxman proudly slamming his fist on a table and proclaiming "and if I had the chance... I'd do it all over again!" but the sentiment is there and it's worrying (indeed, he's starting to grow a moustache; he's wearing a cape; the servant girls look terrified; Mrs Paxman is weeping; and why those trips to Limehouse in the dead of night?).

After watching The Victorians, Law and Order UK takes on a totally different texture. As cockney coppers Matt Devlin (Jamie Bamber) and Ronnie Brooks (Bradley Walsh) chase a possible child murderer through the pea-soup mists of London (I may have exaggerated this), it all seems very, very different from the American versions of the franchise, despite the quick dialogue, recognisable formula and fast pace.

Firstly, the class-based nature of the British justice system (there aren't that many barristers without BBC accents) means that, when the action moves from cops to lawyers, it's a little bit like 1970s Edwardian drama Upstairs Downstairs. "Lawks, guv'nor, saucy Jack's still ravaging the tarts!" I almost expect Devlin to say to posh and bewigged crown prosecutor James Steel (Ben Daniels).

But of course, this isn't totally fair – there's no cap doffing or below-stairs deference. The main reason Law and Order UK seems different is that the quality of the acting and writing is (at least so far) a peg up from the type-by-numbers and ham-by-numbers approach of their American counterparts. And thus the principal characters, particularly Walsh and Daniels, breathe real life into what is ultimately a stifling formula (eye-catching crime, investigation, court-room scene, conclusion). Of course, British audiences like their investigators with a touch of dysfunction, and US-style police procedurals rarely delve into their cops' personal lives, so over time Devlin may have to develop a drink habit or start gambling to assuage that great British thirst for disappointment. Time will tell. In the short term, however, I'm pleasantly surprised (although I'm still expecting to be bored by episode 4). Another programme that takes on a different shape after immersing oneself in Paxman's Victoriana is BBC's post-feminist/pre-Taliban drama series about modern ladies having affairs, Mistresses, which I will now review in the style of a 19th century patriarch (ahem):

"See how the libertine and his wanton bride fornicate wilfully according to the whims of Bohemia; see the emptiness it instils in her heart!"

"Behold the cold, career-minded adulteress neglecting husband and baby for the dead pleasures of a rich man's bed chamber!"

"Revealed: the sadness of the deceived mother, whose lover hides a dark secret, and whose work-mate harbours lust in his heart!"

"And what of the lady with the secret past? It will come out in the end; her sweet-hearted lover will reject her and the bounder who sullied her youth will again have her as his whore."

"All will end in tears; these sad creatures will finish their days in the poor house!"

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest . . . Mistresses made sense as a one-off mini-series, as there's always drama in having a protagonist torn between two (or three) lovers. However, as the series progresses, any potential happiness these characters find has to be disrupted by the formula of, once more, becoming "a mistress". It's just silly and you do start losing patience with the characters. You half expect one of them to wink at the camera, shrug and say: "here we go again!" And there's also a weird morality at work – there's no joy in any of the sexy shenanigans, it's all infused with the essentially Victorian idea that only illicit sex is sexy, and that sex eventually brings misery. It's the 21st century equivalent of a painting of fallen women in a workhouse. And nobody wants that (except possibly Jeremy Paxman).

pfreyne@tribune.ie