The excessive level of forced natural behaviour is brilliant

One of the basic foundations that Come Dine With Me is built upon - and one that I have chosen to live my life by - is that anyone, no matter how interesting/complicated/unusual can be summed up in two words. Thus, contenders in this most grand culinary contest might be described as Glamorous Granny Edna, yummy mummy Karen, straight-talking singleton Carla, meat-eating mechanic David or alpha male Andy. It doesn't matter if this is a sweeping statement - Come Dine With Me is dominated by two-dimensional foodies and we watch to see how these caricatures bounce off each other.

The second great tenet of the series is that we, the viewers, must never be aware that this is just a typical slice on unreality TV - and such Mr Voiceover Man (the programme's true star) forever tells us that the contestants have "decided to go snooping around the house" or "popped to the shops to buy their ingredients" of their own accord. The dinner-party bores are virtually pushed round each other's homes with a cattle prod, but we're led to believe that these staged nosies are spontaneous. The excessive level of forced natural behaviour is brilliant. No one's acting normally, but no-one cares.

Which brings me to my point - the hour-long Come Dine With Me series currently being pumped out by Channel 4 just don't give us enough character development or Through-the-Keyhole-style nosiness. We don't have time to become attached to the contestants, decide who's the good guy and who's the villain, and we're unable to develop poorly thought-out impressions of what these people are really like. Five half-hour slots is the perfect amount of time to come up with rash judgements about a person, not one hour. It's Come Dine With Me, but with the best bits squeezed out.

Thankfully, the series will revert to it's usual format later in the year. In the meantime, there's two-and-a-half hours of repeats every Sunday on More4 to keep me going.

Emmerdale needs some instant gratification and soon

So where did it all go wrong for Emmerdale? Once the little soap that could, now a bloated monster with never-ending, tepid storylines. When it was the underdog, it was forever trying to prove itself, blowing things up just to get some attention. But now we're stuck with plots that go nowhere fast and have seen viewers turning over to roly poly funster Adrian Chiles and his One Show.

The major problem with Emmerdale at the moment is planning - and too much of it. Laurel's baby swap, Viv being set up for fraud, Katie and her blessed surrogacy - these storylines have been months, almost years, in the planning. And the pay off simply isn't going to outweigh the amount of time invested in them. The baby swap thing saw the introduction of an entire family plus Laurel's parents, but they've all been stood around boring everyone until the plot came to fruition. And the Katie-Perdy-Gray triangle is a dull mess that was always going to take at least nine months to iron out.

Emmerdale needs some instant gratification and soon. I'm not advocating another disaster, but surely there must be a nuclear reactor in Skipdale that's close to malfunctioning. Like Corrie, there's a great need for a cast clear-out in the Dales. The Dingles are no longer funner, the Kings' in-fighting has been done to death, who cares about the De Souzas and why are Jamie and Louise even together? Most importantly, is it really necessary for entire episodes to be set down the police station? This isn't The Bill, mores the pity.

There's still much to recommend Emmerdale - it has the best writing of any of the soaps, though the writers just aren't being given much to do except supply Val and Betty with great one-liners. And there are some great characters around - Diane, Val, Rodney, Jo and Chas to name a few. But the dead wood needs chopping and some new elements need flinging into the mix. Kick the Kings out of Home Farm to make way for a new Dales Dynasty, bring Kathy Bates back with an Aussie family, get Kelly Windsor back and get her on heroine, and give some top-flight bitches like in olden days rather than the hopeless Nicola. It's time for a major reinvention.

Bring Back John Sachs!

I've put off putting my thoughts about Sky One's stab at Gladiators onto LCD as I was initially disappointed by the 21st-century revamp. The sets seem small, the gladiators themselves lack personality, the contestants have been hopeless and offered no contest to the glads, and the first episode committed the cardinal sin of kicking off with Duel.

Kicking off with Duel - Duel is the final gladiator v contestant contest of the show! Hell's bells, what were they thinking? Next thing they'll be bringing back Dogfight...

Thankfully, I've been snapped out of this line of thinking thanks to catching an edition from the first-ever series on Challenge. Ulrika and Fash were appalling hosts, some of the early gladiators were pretty lame, and sticking to the same games every week was enormously tedious.

Plus, the second Sky One show was a big improvement - despite the contestants being rather hopeless and the gladiators remarkably humourless. This is one of the first things that needs to be addressed - the glads need character. Only a few of the new heroes stand out so far: Oblivion for his beady eyes and staccato put-downs, Battleaxe for her Northern smiley demeanor, and Atlas and Spartan for genuinely being nice guys. All the others are too obsessed with trying to be the new Wolf, Shadow or Nightshade. Where's the new Jet, Lightning or Cobra?

Other aspects that aren't quite working are the new Eliminator (the 'cotton bud' things seem impossible, and why make the contestants all wet and slippery before they have to hold onto anything?), the commentary (bring back John Sachs!), and playing just four games a week is a bit of a let down.

But despite this, I'm now on message with the new Gladiators. This country needs a break from sappy musical talent shows and programmes in which celebrities demean themselves. If ITV1 had brought back Gladiators and given it a decent budget, things would be peachy. As it stands, Sky are doing a pretty good job on a limited stash of cash. And hopefully by the time this series concludes, the glads will have worked out who they are, the contestants will be able to fight back on Duel and some new games will have spiced things up. Roll on the Old v New Gladiator special!

A Sudden Slice of Whimsy

Zooming four years into the future - skipping embarrassing explanations as to why all the cast ended up going to the same, local college - has worked wonders for One Tree Hill - turning the angsty teen drama into a modern, angst-ridden twentysomething romp, complete with Lost-style flashbacks. And now it looks like Desperate Housewives has taken a leaf out of One Tree's book, taking the fifth season in an unexpected direction.

The conclusion of the fourth, much improved, season took viewers five years into the future to reveal a few surprises about the Wisteria Lane lasses. Lynette's troublesome tots are now extremely troublesome teen tearaways. Gaby's got a couple of sprogs of her own. Susan's got a new fella. And - best of all - Bree's become a Martha Stewart-esque domestic goddess, with Andrew as her PA. It seems inevitable that this is a set-up for the new season, rather than a sudden slice of whimsy - and re-inventing both the series and the characters could be just what's needed to get through a difficult fifth season.

The only potential fault with Despo Housewives leaping forward five years is the fact that tiresome narrator Mary Alice is still haunting the girls. When will US telly bosses get over this obsession with disembodied narrators stating the obvious throughout otherwise top shows? Though Pushing Daisies at times tries to have a laugh at Jim Dale's incessant bleating, only Arrested Development has ever come close to mocking this overused convention. Perhaps a second bullet to Mary Alice's cranium could do the trick?