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Miss Austen Regrets: "I'm not in the picture am I?"

I sometimes have to record the programmes I review and so occasionally find myself watching them at very odd hours.

But never before have I experienced anything quite as disconcerting as viewing Embarrassing Bodies (all week, ITV1, 9pm) at eight o'clock in the morning while eating - or rather suddenly not eating - my Cornflakes.

In its normal evening slot, just after the watershed, this health series "with a difference" would have been hard to swallow, but in the cold light of day it seemed desperately tasteless.

Under the guise of helping people suffering from ailments the kind of which I thought had died out along with the bubonic plague, they set up a mobile clinic staffed by doctors with trendy names like Pixie, in the middle of a busy high street (the one I watched was in Leeds) and before you could say "aaaaah", it was full of miserable-looking shoppers, heads bowed and all with a sorry tale - or even tail (more of which shortly).

And in order to show their various horrible conditions, most of them had to - snigger, snigger - remove their clothes.

So this flimsy excuse for a medical show ended up getting away with the sort of in-your-face nudity and genital exposure a Channel 4 drama can only dream of.

We met a woman with a tail growing out of her bum, no, seriously, it's true, because she showed it to us.

In fact the doctor (who I swear was dying to laugh) waggled it about for us in close-up, just in case we hadn't got a good look.

We also joined in while they examined a man's angry looking penis (well I suppose you'd be miffed too if you were filmed without being consulted); the man told the doctor that it was stopping him "having pleasure".

I'm saying nothing.

Thankfully things became a bit less pant-based when a poor lady rolled up her trousers to reveal skin on her legs that looked exactly like my cereal, making me grateful I'd already pushed it aside earlier on in the proceedings.

Then there was the chap who'd lost so much weight he was left with big flaps of loose flesh that wanted lopping off.

Which the surgeons did and which they filmed with relish... in fact parts of it actually looked like relish.

But it was the examination of the woman who was unhappy with her lady-bits that summed it all up.

I won't go into detail - they did that for us - but let's just say that excess skin was mentioned a lot.

The doctor had a look, and so did we, and it was declared that the woman had no need for concern.

But could she please stand up just so we could have another giggle, I mean look.

After further examination and fiddling, the GP finally said: "Yes, I think I've seen enough."

I couldn't agree more, Doc.

And now I hardly dare mention Imogen Poots' Fanny in the brilliant Miss Austen Regrets (Sunday, BBC1, 8pm), but mention it I must for she was so good, despite having to compete for attention with Olivia Williams' fabulous portrayal of Jane Austen herself.

Costume dramas are the mainstays of Sunday night viewing, there's no doubt about that, but apart from the really exceptional productions, I suffer a bit from bodice and bonnet fatigue.

So the fact that this wasn't even an adaptation of a classic, but a fictional take on the life of one of our most popular dead authors, albeit based on her letters, didn't exactly have me wheeling out the pianola and bellowing up the fire in anticipation.

But I was so wrong. It was lovely, interesting, exciting and at the same time really sad.

Fanny, Jane's young niece, made a bright, happy flibbertygibbit of a foil to her aunt's intelligent, cynical and wise approach to life.

The acting was top-notch.

Poots was perfect and Williams (the wife of Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, triv fans) was incredibly good.

And a shockingly dowdified Greta Scacchi was subtly brilliant as her sister, Cassandra.

Concentrating on the second half of Austen's life, we saw how she went from a sheltered life of giddy parties, full of dancing and flirting and where she wrote witty, insightful tales about the human spirit even though she had little worldly experience, to one of relative austerity, failing health and a sense of guilty regret at never having married and had children.

Yet, had she conformed, had she accepted the first proposal that came along and became a wife and mother, she would never have found the time to come up with all those novels.

She would never have come across Mr Darcy.

And nor would we.

3:18pm Friday 2nd May 2008

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