Aidan Smith's TV week: The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix), Mr & Mrs Smith (Prime Video), Griselda (Netflix), Trigger Point (ITV)

If like me you’ve never quite left behind the “My band’s better than your band” squabbling of the school common-room when musical appreciation was a competitive sport, then Netflix’s The Greatest Night in Pop will start out annoying you.

Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson in The Greatest Night in Pop

That title! How “greatest”? Surely that was Band Aid, the first mustering of conscience-baring stars, and America went and copied with “We Are the World”. And while we’re at it, that title! The self-importance! Bob Dylan a bigger deal than Spandau Ballet? (Okay, never mind …).

This is a documentary about the song’s creation and I know that six minutes elapse before its prime movers offer Bob Geldof a passing mention because I check. Archive TV has a talking head, over footage of Ethiopia’s starving, admitting: “With so much going on, reports like these don’t have much impact.” (Not quite Michael Buerk, then. And not quite the “Biblical famine” of the BBC man's dispatch.).

Kenny Loggins is one who confesses he’d been ignorant of the crisis. And even the song’s composers, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, didn’t initially seem fully focused. “We were kidding around,” says Richie, who narrates. “We thought we had all the time in the world.”

Sofia Vergara in Griselda

Stevie Wonder was supposed to be in on the writing sessions but only turned up when the track was completed, three weeks’ late. In that time Richie had to cope with interruptions from Jackson’s menagerie, including Bubbles the chimp, Ricky the myna bird and … what was that hissing sound? A snake, posted missing which suddenly re-appeared. “I’m screaming,” says Richie. “I’d seen that horror movie and it didn’t end well for the brother.”

There might not have been snake-like behaviour in the Los Angeles studio for recording through the night but musical director Quincy Jones still had to dampen down some egos. Loggins recalls “the low hum of competition”. (Who am I standing alongside? I must get my own line to sing, yes?). Richie remembers Cyndi Lauper threatening to walk away because she couldn’t hear a hit (ultimately 20 million copies would be sold). And Prince refusing to show unless granted a guitar solo and a separate room. But everyone seems to knuckle down after a visit from Geldof. Addressing the glittery gathering he says: “I don’t know if we in particular can conceive of nothing but nothing is not having water … is 15 bags of flour for 27,500 people.”

And it is truly glittery. Bruce Springsteen next to Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson next to Dionne Warwick, and behind them Billy Joel, Willie Nelson and Daryl Hall. “If a bomb goes off here,” quips Paul Simon, “then John Denver’s back on top.”

That might be my favourite line from a doc for which ultimately I suspend cynicism to enjoy stars doing unstarry things, such as panicking (Dylan), over-refreshing (Al Jarreau), being fangirls and collecting autographs (Diana Ross) and being genuinely thrilled to be present and handed the no-show Prince’s line (Huey Lewis).

Vicky McClure in Trigger Point

There are other contenders for the funniest moment such as Ray Charles following yet another rewrite: “Please don’t change it anymore, my liver’s gettin’ bad as hell!” He’s then accompanied arm-in-arm to the loos by Wonder. “That really was the blind leading the blind,” laughs Richie.

Back at the mics, Wonder suddenly bursts into Swahili. We definitely need some in the song, he insists. Waylon Jennings, part of the country music contingent, balks at this: “Ain’t no good ol’ boy ever sung Swahili. I think I’m outta here.” Someone remembers they don’t speak Swahili in Ethiopia but Jennings is already on his way home to Nashville.

Mr & Mrs Smith, the 2005 movie, must answer for a lot. Crime capers for one thing. It didn’t invent the genre but definitely encouraged the sometimes ungainly mash-up of comedy and violence.

It did invent the mash-up of celebrity names with stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - not at that moment a couple - becoming “Brangelina”. And because Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston and then suddenly wasn’t anymore, it began the obsessive preoccupation of tabloids and supermarket check-out mags with Aniston’s love life subsequently - invariably painted in poignant hues - that continues to this day.

So, Prime Video’s telly reboot: go on, match all that. Impossible, of course, and this doesn’t try to compete with beautiful Brad and beautiful Angelina. Danny Glover and Maya Erskine are the Smiths but they do offer up a twist: instead of a married couple who eventually find out each is an elite assassin, John and Jane are upfront with one another but pretending to everyone else they're husband and wife.

We learn a bit about them at the start from computer profiles. John has “anti-social tendencies” while Jane, half-Japanese, half-Scottish, is “emotionally unintelligent, numb and manipulative”. Is it the Scots bit of her that’s responsible for all that? Oh probably, but this is not the big mystery of Mr & Mrs Smith. “I'm not in this for romance,” Jane warns John, fond of walking around their New York apartment shirtless and hunky. Really? I don't think I believe her. There’s decent chemistry between the pair but come on, the only reason to watch is this: are they going to get it on?

Modern Family is much-missed in our house. My children, anxious about growing up too fast, like to re-watch early episodes when the comedy’s kids were young and (fairly) innocent. Me, I always viewed Phil - “I’m the cool dad, that’s my thang” - as the perfect role model. “For goofy but selfless fatherhood,” I tell my wife, to which she replies: “For being a pervy neighbour, more like. You just wish you lived next door to Gloria rather than Margaret who’s 90.”

What must it have been like playing the Colombian sex-bomb, ramping up the accent to comedy-Colombian levels and mining the Colombian cliches (guns, drugs) while the idiot over the fence continued to stare at your chest? I think the answer is found in what Sofia Viagra - sorry, Vargera - is doing now.

Griselda (Netflix) couldn’t be more different and Vargera couldn’t look more different. It’s the biopic of a cocaine queenpin - so she can’t quite get away from guns and drugs - requiring a prosthetic nose and the pneumatic figure to be concealed. A kind of Son, or Daughter, of Narcos, with the main man in that, Pablo Escobar, once declaring: “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.”

Same era, so same zazzy silks and tight pants - and that’s just the men. Same blood flying everywhere, too. Griselda - and Vargera is terrific, by the way - must flee a horrible, drug-dealing husband. He taunts her: “Just some old piece of ass with three brat kids - let’s see how far you get.” He doesn’t say much after that, on account of being potted heid.

Last and very much least, Trigger Point (ITV) returns. It’s all about the explosions in Vicky McClure’s bomb-disposal drama and perhaps even if the script was of Aaron Sorkin or David Chase standard, we’d still be hanging about, waiting for the next big blast. I’ve seen the central romance compared to Mills & Boon. It’s okay, I’ll do the jokes: Mills & Boom, more like.