WELL aren’t we a sophisticated lot? A television milestone was reached this month when it emerged that almost half of UK households, 13 million plus, now pay to stream programmes.

Millions are no longer willing to put up with any old tat on mainstream television, preferring instead to pick and mix from an ever larger selection of goodies. We have become our own “curators”, as a media type might say. If that does not deserve a Chewin’ the Fat waggle of fingers under the chin, nothing does.

Programmes have evolved to suit our more refined palates, even on terrestrial telly. Take the home makeover show. It used to be that the BBC’s Changing Rooms was the gold standard. You remember: Carol Smillie being smiley, handy Andy the Cockney builder being working class, and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen narrowly avoiding a punch in the face every week after his team unveiled some hideous, chintz-strewn and MDF-plastered room when what the family really wanted was a splash of magnolia and a new couch.

Interior Design Masters (BBC2, Wednesday, 8pm) pitched itself as belonging to a different postcode from Changing Rooms. If CR was a bit Essex, IDM thought it was made in Chelsea.

Ten aspiring interior designers were competing for the big prize: a contract to design a hotel bar in London. Fearne Cotton was the presenter, flanked by two experts from the trade. The ten were split into teams and sent off to Northumberland to do up show homes. At the end of it, one person was sent home. If it sounds like The Apprentice with cushions, or Bake Off with knobs on, that is because it was.

Scotland was represented by Terian, a solicitor, who described her style as “a mash-up of Caribbean and mid-century modern”. Her bedroom design was deemed fresh, modern and clean, just the thing for a show home. Another contestant had taken the opposite tack, painting the walls of the master bedroom black. Would that fly? Not unless an Aleister Crowley wannabe was among the potential home buyers. Fortunately, someone else had done a tacky front room with too much pink, and after a ridiculously drawn out results sequence, he left the show. Though the contestants were being lovely and supportive towards each other it will be glue guns at dawn before this series is finished, or I’m an antimacassar.

Succession (Sky Atlantic, Monday 9pm) was back, and man has it been missed. Created by Jesse Armstrong (The Thick of It, Four Lions), it is the Bafta-winning tale of media mogul Logan Roy, who is definitely not based on Rupert Murdoch. Now in the winter of his years, Rupe, sorry, Logan (played by our own Brian Cox) is fighting off a takeover bid once led by his first born son Kendall, who turned on daddy dearest because he would not hand over the business as promised.

A diamond hard comedy drama where the laughs are funereal bleak and most of the characters wish each other dead, it is difficult to choose a favourite monster from the bunch. For sheer naked ambition and over-estimation of his talents, son-in-law Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is a stand out (“Could I consider the big trousers? Could I fill them out?”). Towering above them all is Cox, once again showing that if you want a bona fide American grizzly, hire Dundee’s finest.

Though Roy was advised that culturally, structurally and financially his old media empire was “in the toilet” he vowed to fight on, quietly tipping his aptly named daughter Shiv as his successor. If anyone delights in sticking a blade where it hurts it is our Shiv. There will be blood.

Deep Water (STV, Wednesday, 9pm) is another of those television dramas about Strong Women. You know the type: only when you put them in hot water do you see their strength. Yawn.

Not that this lot needed persuading to dive into the nearest cauldron. Take Lisa (Anna Friel), dog walker, wife, and slummy mummy who was generally all over the place. At a dinner party thrown by perfect mummy Kate, Lisa decided to bump bones in an upstairs loo with a man she had just met.

The other supposedly strong but not really gal was physiotherapist Roz, whose gambling loser of a husband has landed them in debt. Did she (1) go to Citizens’ Advice for help (2) bin him or (3) contemplate taking up a client’s offer of cash for sex? If you answered anything other than (3), hang your head in shame.

Set in the Lake District, Deep Water desperately wants to be Big Little Lies with wellies, but after one episode it has a long way to go. It is either going to snap into a taut whodunnit, or slide into an enjoyably trashy jaunt. Given the scene where Lisa remembered in flashback her lost thong falling in slow motion to the bathroom floor – slo-mo! –I know where my money is heading.