On the box: Upstairs Downstairs | Three Men Go To Scotland | Just William

I SAY, isn't it rather splendid that Upstairs Downstairs has returned? It is so ghastly having to do without a Dame in period dress in one's life, isn't it?

Even for the frightful moment between one class-obsessed drama and the next. Well, fear not servants, socialites, and monarchs. Just as Dame Maggie departs in ITV's Downton Abbey, here comes Dame Eileen with a sour expression and Indian manservant in tow, demanding thick-cut marmalade for her monkey.

Ahem. Sorry for going a bit Upstairs on you. Truth be told I'd rather go Downstairs. Everyone knows from the original Seventies series that life below stairs is always more interesting.

And so it was second time round at 165 Eaton Place, Belgravia. Maybe next time they'll rename it Downstairs Upstairs. It might also help us stomach that ghastly feeling of nostalgia Brits are prone to when faced with anything about our rather more ghastly class system.

Whatever, the new occupants were perfect. Keely Hawes as Lady Agnes Holland doing slim, smug and self-satisfied? Tick. Ed Stoppard as Sir Hallam doing absolutely nothing? Tick. Dame Atkins' colonial matriarch Maud Holland delivering lines such as "where one can't compete, one must aspire" with such panache even Jane Austen would punch the air with a gloved fist. You bet.

Then there was Jean Marsh as Rose Buck, the dependable housekeeper who played the maid in the original and did the nostalgia bit with her stoical stroking of dusty banisters. Marsh and Atkins created the original and remake and though this lacked the knowing camp of Downton Abbey it did its best with languid style and some cracking one-liners.

"I cannot tell you how much it boosts one's confidence," remarked Maud after revealing that her monkey applauds her each morning. Quite.

That ITV is beating the BBC in the period drama wars (where the slap-ups are between bonneted ladies and the loser has to eat diced egg in aspic, natch) takes some getting used to, but what can one say? These are strange, unequal times.

I'd rather eat my own telly remote in aspic than endure another hour of Three Men Go To Scotland. Griff Rhys Jones, Dara O'Briain and Rory McGrath have already milked being On A Boat and after watching them patronise Scotland, I wished they hadn't returned from their maiden voyage.

It's your average cynical formula. Take three self-indulgent men (always men) whose jokes about caber-tossing and what lies beneath kilts are so testosterone-fuelled Jeremy Clarkson could motor all the way to Caithness on them.

Give them a flimsy historical premise about some journey Boswell and Johnson made to the Hebrides in… blah, blah, blah. Use as an excuse to bag loads of free stuff. Make obvious, embarrassing observations about Scotland. And you're done.

The bad news is they visit the Corryvreckan whirlpool and don't get sucked in. The worse news is this is only the first episode. In the second instalment our unenlightened trio find Scotland's most remote pub. Somehow I don't think it'll be remote enough for me.

Thankfully Just William was on hand to remind us what a proper rogue should be: mop-haired, cheeky-faced, a right pain in the Corryvreckan (dear god, these bad jokes are catching).

Giving the job of the titular outlaw to Outnumbered's Daniel Roche, who basically already is William Brown in everything but name, was a stroke of casting genius. He has the perfect naughty face for hiding in bushes, firing a bow and arrow, and he just was William when he stomped around the Botts' garden with a sullen expression and a pair of fairy wings, while Violet Elizabeth commanded him to "kith me or I'll cwy".

Simon Nye's charming mini-series set the story of the middle-class Brown family and the nouveau riche Botts in the Fifties and Martin Jarvis's voiceover was as gentle as William was roughy-toughy.

One gripe. The gender politics are unbelievably retrograde. Girls are fluffy, silly, emotionally manipulative nightmares. Boys are outdoorsy, inquisitive bullies. As Outnumbered has taught us, boys and girls can be all things. And they are equally annoying.

They're not a patch on adults though. Lee Hall's terrific adaptation of Nigel Slater's memoir, Toast (BBC1 Thursday, 9pm), showed us – mostly through a smorgasbord of tins of braised beef, jellied ham and slice upon slice of crunchy buttered toast – just how miserable family life can be.

I have never seen a mince pie imbued with so much sadness.

Here was the Wolverhampton boy growing up in an unhappy home, aspiring to more than Fray Bentos and salad cream. Class, nostalgia, food – I'm starting to sense a theme here.

What was so wonderful (apart from the lemon meringue pie whose snowy peaks will taunt my tastebuds unto death) was the way Nigel's foodie awakening chimed with his sexual one. And Helena Bonham Carter as the cleaner who cooks her way into the Slater household was a dream: brassy, spiky and capable of whipping up any cuisine with a fag in her mouth.

She was so good, in fact, I kind of ended up rooting for her instead of Nigel, which wasn't really the point. Okay, it was probably because she made the lemon meringue pie. Perhaps the way to a person's heart is through their stomach after all.

UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

BBC1 Boxing Day, 9pm

THREE MEN GO TO SCOTLAND

BBC2 Monday, 8pm

JUST WILLIAM

BBC1 Sunday, 12.30pm

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 2 January, 2011