I’ve got plenty of marking I can be getting on with

TA119An educational Telly Addict this week. Well, the schools have gone back, and the nights are drawing in. Paying brief thematic respect to Big School on BBC1, Bad Education on BBC3 and Waterloo Road on BBC1, we give the following documentaries a double-period: Harrow: A Very British School on Sky1, and the far more relevant Educating Yorkshire on C4; then it’s a lip-smacking erotic montage from The Great British Bake Off on BBC2; congrats to this year’s Celebrity Masterchef, on BBC1; a warm on the re-entrance of Jon Stewart to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show; and a doff of the hardhat to the exceptional Rebuilding The World Trade Center on C4. See me.

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Decline and fall

TA118We must sit on our hands and address the return of The X-Factor to ITV this week on Telly Addict, the Roman Empire of TV formats – even though I only managed to sit through ten minutes of it; on a more progressive note, HBO’s The Newsroom also returns to Sky Atlantic; the houseshare whodunit What Remains proves a welcome addition to Sunday nights on BBC1; Celebrity Masterchef goes synch crazy with the music and the cookery; Ben Miller meets His Hero Tony Hancock in My Hero on BBC2; and Chickens on Sky1 gets a quick mention because I rather like it.

Now, where was I …?

Two weeks is a long time in television, although not so much when there’s an Olympics on. As you know, I made my own entertainment between the Opening and Closing ceremony, so it’s nice to get back in the saddle and review a few TV programmes again while looking into a camera. Telly Addict has never before been “off the air” (I had one week off last year and Guardian scribe Stuart Heritage filled in), so it feels weird, but here it is. I’m mostly talking about Celebrity Masterchef, back for its seventh series on BBC2; A History Of Art In Three Colours, a splendid antidote to all that cheering and winning on BBC4, with my favourite TV academic Dr James Fox; a nod to Friday Night Lights, season two – eek! – Sky Atlantic; and a glance at Jimmy McGovern’s Accused on BBC1. Next week, I shall be at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, so Telly Addict will act accordingly, by being filmed in the lobby of an exhibition centre in Edinburgh, with TV types wandering past in laminates, although there may be opportunity for other filmed delights. We shall see. Anything is possible after the Olympics.