TV review - The Bletchley Circle and Wartime Farm

And when Harry Corbett's son Matthew took over from him on The Sooty Show I almost had to take time off work.

By contrast, I have always been comfortable with where both the BBC and ITV stand in the great scheme of things.

To my mind, the Beeb has always been a bastion of quality broadcasting. The independent lot, by contrast, I see as just churning out mindless pap featuring those at the shallow end of the gene pool. There, it is simple – or so I thought.

Sadly, a great pebble of change appears to have been dropped into my comfort pool and the ensuing mind ripples have left me no longer sure about anything. Take last night for example.

The Bletchley Circle (ITV) is a new series and it was excellent drama. In an original slant on the usual detective yarns, women working during the Second World War at the top secret Bletchley Park code-breaking centre in Buckinghamshire turn their talents to unravelling clues left by a serial sex killer targeting women in the area.

The acting is first rate, the period recreation wholly convincing, the atmosphere taut and the plot intricate yet steadily unfolding. In short, I was hooked, playing mental Cluedo by following the women's trains of thought and methodical approach. This was TV worth watching.

There are two more hour-long episodes of this gripping drama to come and, following as they do the excellent A Mother's Son which screened on Monday and Tuesday this week, ITV is doing much to change the image I have of it.

Still with good old WWII at its heart, another new series hit the Devil's Lantern last night but this was not so enthralling. Wartime Farm (BBC2) was the sort of vacuous drivel ITV is normally so adept at producing and yet this was being excreted by the BBC! Oh dear! Et tu, Beebe?

The listings blurb told us "Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn take on their biggest challenge yet – to turn back the clock and run Manor Farm exactly as it would have been during the Second World War".

One word springs to mind – why? Surely the Giles family, or whoever, has spent the last 67 years trying to get Manor Farm, in Hampshire, running in a modern, productive and viable way? Why then would I want to witness three academic, agrarian vandals dressing up like extras from Dad's Army and dragging it back to the last century?

Viewers who lived through those dark days of war probably don't want to be reminded of them, those who missed the war but still had an education probably already know there wasn't a Sainsbury's in every field and those with no knowledge of or interest in history simply don't care about anything anyway unless it involves Cheryl Cole or chips.

Ruth got a new, electric iron while Alex and Peter hammered out a wheel rim. I dared not nip away for a cuppa in case I missed anything.

Then Ruth, cranking up the excitement even more while apparently disguised as Hilda Ogden, tried to get a tractor going with a starting handle. Adrenaline was flooding my veins. Basically, it was just Big Brother with powdered egg – and there are seven more helpings of this televisual cat litter to come!

As Churchill almost said, Wartime Farm is just an example of the BBC chasing ITV down "into the abyss of a new Dark Age", at a time when, in fact, ITV is actually now on its way back up to "broad, sunlit uplands".

At least, unlike the war, it will be over by Christmas.