Last night's TV: Clever dogs that can wag TV's tail

EXACTLY what level of genius is required to come up with a programme like Send in the Dogs? Come with me now as we take a journey into the inner workings of a TV commissioning editor's mind. "What do people like?" he muses. "People like dogs. They also like real-life police procedural programmes. Therefore, if I shove these disparate elements together then we're looking at surefire TV gold." Job done.

Narrated by Ken Stott, presumably because he looks like a bloodhound, Send in the Dogs this week followed the trail of highly trained police sniffer dogs Eddie and Keela. These amazing creatures were instrumental in the investigation into allegations of child abuse at the former Jersey children's home, Haut de la Garenne. Capable of sniffing out human remains that are up to 100 years old, they eventually uncovered what appeared to be a grisly underground torture chamber. No wonder they're Britain's highest earning pooches.

Keela's super-sensitive nose is hired out by the police at a rate of 530 a day, a level of earning in line with a chief constable's. She and Eddie are so renowned that the Portuguese police actually asked for them specifically to assist in the search for Madeline McCann. Obviously they haven't been entirely successful in that regard as yet.

Owned by PC Mark Lawman (I kid you not), the formidable German shepherd, Zeus, is known by local criminals as "the land shark". According to Lawman, "he likes kids, and hates hoodies". Presumably he also has strong opinions about asylum-seekers and "men who look a bit funny".

Lawman and Zeus would make a cracking ITV comedy drama, possibly starring John Thomson. And bearing in mind the strictly linear thought processes of those who run television, I can virtually guarantee that this will actually happen.

What a disappointment Summer Heights High turned out to be. This Australian mockumentary series started out most promisingly a couple of months ago, but sadly ran out of steam around the third episode. The principal fault seems to be that writer/star Chris Lilley didn't have enough material to sustain eight semi-improvised half hours spent at a fictional "povo" suburban high school.

Also, the three characters he brought to life – narcissistic drama teacher Mr G, self-absorbed rich girl J'amie and disruptive Tongan tearaway Jonah – haven't really gone on any kind of journey. I appreciate that one of the central tenets of sitcom is that the characters essentially stay the same every week, but when it comes to writing a narrative-led, naturalistic faux-documentary such as this, the viewer should expect at least some character development.

Ricky Gervais is an obvious influence on Lilley's brand of, for want of a better description, "cringe" humour, but at least Gervais managed to make you actually care about the characters in The Office. In Summer Heights High all we're presented with is three – admittedly brilliantly observed – characters each doing their thing in a vacuum. Lilley is also guilty of using a boy with Down's syndrome merely as a way of procuring cheap, "awkward" laughter, which just seemed uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons.

While no-one could refute that Lilley immersed himself completely in his roles, at times it felt like we were simply eaves-dropping on the banal conversations of real teenage students. There were precious few actual jokes to be found. Lilley is obviously talented, but he definitely needs a firmer guiding hand to remove him from this kind of listless self-indulgence.