There are times when the television schedules are like a show trial. One after another, public figures we once loved and respected stand up to confess their shortcomings. Please forgive me, I’m the size of a whale. Look at me, look at me, I’m a professional attention-seeker. Members of the jury, may I call the next defendant, Mr Griff Rhys Jones, into the dock.

For years, we have known him as a professional entertainer of the highest quality. He is reliably amusing, he is versatile and, best of all, he appeared to just get on with the job without fuss and bother. Ah, well, another illusion shattered. In Losing It - Griff Rhys Jones on Anger, he revealed he has tantrums that would embarrass a passing toddler. Once, during a production of Twelfth Night, he actually threw himself on the floor and hammered his fists in frustration. Griff, oh, Griff, why did you have to tell us? It was like finding out that Stephen Fry keeps whippets, reads The People and has advertised for a Thai bride.

The witnesses were devastating. It was his sister who told us about the Twelfth Night tantrum. His children say he mutters at home and writes furious e-mails of complaint. Most unforgivable of all, though, he is rude to the staff. Anna Wilks, his assistant and agent, remembered her first day working for him, and who wouldn’t? He kicked a hole in the door. Griff didn’t remember this. In fact, what was most depressing to long-standing members of the Rhys Jones Appreciation Society was his magnificent insensitivity. He clearly has no idea of how his anger affects others.

Griff was hoping for reassurance, but Anna did not oblige. In fact, she stuck it to him good and proper in what was the most revealing encounter of the entire hour. Griff was genuinely hurt, and rather puzzled.

They should show this film at anger-management classes. Angry people wish to dominate and get their way. No such luck. As Griff so unfortunately demonstrated, they usually end up looking a bit silly.

And so to affable, even-tempered Greg Dyke, who was briefly director-general of the BBC, but now has a sideline in biographical documentaries. Last year, he did Lord Reith; last week, he turned his attention to Aneurin Bevan, midwife to the National Health Service.

At the beginning of Greg Dyke on Nye Bevan, he promised to strip away the romance and myth from Bevan and to examine his political record. He then got down on his knees and worshipped at the Aneurin Bevan Nonconformist Chapel. He even admitted that he wept on reading Michael Foot’s biography of Nye. (Actually, I didn’t think it was that bad.)

Nobody had a bad word to say about Bevan. Even Michael Heseltine praised his brilliance. No, I tell a lie, there was one person: the late Ernest Bevin, who served alongside Nye as foreign secretary. As Dyke recalled, a now anonymous figure once remarked to Bevin: “Nye is his own worst enemy.” “Not while I’m alive he ain’t,” growled Bevin, who was also a former trade unionist, and from equally humble origins.

Half Ton Veg was pioneering television. It met three people who grew giant pumpkins and 19ft beetroots, and it took them entirely seriously. Over half an hour, the programme completely resisted the temptation - which must have been great - to titter behind its fingers and poke fun.

Everything about Half Ton Veg somehow confounded the usual values of television.

The big climax, the National Big Veg Show at Shepton Mallet, was held in an ugly breeze-block warehouse. There was no showbiz or attempt to glam up. It was all rather uplifting. Yet there was one question the programme failed to answer, even when Pete, undisputed champion of the big-veg world for the past decade, revealed that he’d been trying for 25 years to grow a big onion. And that question was: why?

There were many unanswered questions in Place of Execution, a crime drama adapted from a Val McDermid novel. Whenever AA Gill is away, I usually try to avoid crime drama. You can too often see the joins, and it’s rarely as exciting as it claims. The people who made Place of Execution, however, sent me, possibly inadvertently, all three episodes. I watched them back to back because I wanted to know what happened. (So, I notice, did the bloke from The Daily Telegraph.)

Many of the usual crime-drama props were in place. There was a campaigning television reporter with troubles at home - a single mother with a wayward daughter. There was a young police inspector trying to make his mark, with a traditional old AA Gill is away. Radio Waves is on page 77 sergeant by his side. There was a Yorkshire village, suspicious and difficult as a 13-year-old girl goes missing. There was an arrogant toff at the big house. Yet somehow the series was greater than the sum of these parts.

Juliet Stevenson, who always looks as if she could do with a good night’s sleep and a square meal, played the television reporter Catherine Heathcote, who is investigating a 1963 murder case. The inspector in charge has since risen to become chief constable (he is played by Philip Jackson, alias Chief Inspector Japp of the Yard, owner of Scotland Yard’s most reassuring moustache). Why, suddenly, does he want to pull out of her programme?

The action switched nimbly between the present and 1963, where the rather geeky inspector (Lee Ingleby, in bottle-thick specs) at first appeared out of his depth. Yet gradually he began to become a more commanding figure, winning the respect of his reliable and traditionally built sergeant. Hang on to the end. It’ll be worth it.

While we’re assessing worth, did John Adams deserve the 13 Emmys that were showered upon it on Monday, beating the previous record of 11 for a single pro-gramme? It has been a huge hit in America. The DVD set has sold twice as many as expected. Tourists have been flocking to Adams country. Yet it’s difficult to imagine the series, admirable though it is in almost every way, having such an impact in this country. Adams was the second president of the United States, after serving as vice-president under Washington. Imagine making a drama about Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, and hoping for a hit in Wyoming.

The first episode deals with events in Boston on March 5, 1770, when a detachment of British redcoats opened fire on a crowd. Five people were killed. The events of this time have iconic status in the USA: they forged the values of America. Not only that, John Adams appeared on American television at a sensitive time: when the country is unsure of its place in the world, when American soldiers, not British redcoats, are the supposed oppressors. How comforting, then, to see the decency of this founding father, the only lawyer in Boston who will defend the hated redcoats on a charge of murder, a man who puts justice above politics.

Viewed just as television and not as political Nurofen, some of the dialogue is a little ponderous. But the highlight of the opening episode is a courtroom drama of real tension. And Paul Giamatti is excellent as the squat, balding, frock-coated Adams, the Baldrick of the Boston bar.

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