TO: Dawn French.

Subject: It’s not you,

it’s me.

Dear Dawn, you come across as a good wee spud, as does the right-on reverend character you played in The Vicar of Dibley in Lockdown (BBC1, Monday). Beloved by millions, the show has been brought back for Christmas to bring cheer where there is little. A televisual shot-in-the-arm while we wait for the real one. A tonic for the troops.

Yet I cannot stand it. Its tweeness makes me want to claw my skin off. Smug, calculated, painful in even the tiniest of doses, it’s the comedy equivalent of a skelf in the thumb.

Admittedly, I did watch only the first of three short films in which your Reverend Geraldine give a sermon by Zoom, and I hear the second is a sight to see.

But, even at 10 minutes, this first instalment was like 100 lashes with a wet Cath Kidston tea towel. That bit at the start when you prodded the computer and asked: “Is it working?” As hilarious as it was original. Like I say, it’s not me, it’s you. Or something like that. Love, Alison

It is impossible not to like the woman at the centre of Nadiya’s American Adventure (BBC1, Thursday). What a long way she has come from winning Bake Off. Can it only be five years ago? Then again, Hussain is so successful because she has not changed her personality or style to suit telly. The medium adores naturals and she is the real deal, able to put people at their ease whatever their age or background.

She needed that skill-set here in what was an odd, hour-long blend of cooking show, documentary, travelogue and bird-spotting.

First stop was Louisiana and New Orleans. After enjoying herself at Mardi Gras she took a 10-minute trip out to an area that was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago, and largely remained so today. But she found a local man who had opened up a shop to sell almost anything, including hope.

Everywhere she went, she cooked, adding her own spin to local dishes. Oh, and much to her obvious delight, she spied a bald eagle in a tree.

There was the occasional off note when she stated the thoroughly obvious – New Orleans was where jazz was born, don’t you know

– but, by and large, her commentary zipped along.

Red Penguins (BBC4, Monday) was a documentary that seemed to have it all. Here was the tale of Americans buying a stake in the Red Army hockey team just after the Soviet Union had collapsed. The American investors sent a marketing whizz called Steve Warshaw over to Moscow, and he found a club as broken and rotten as the country. Chaos reigned, a little money came in for sponsorship but more of it went out the door.

Gabe Polsky’s film took an age to get going, which made it run far longer than the story merited. As

for that story, there was too much

of everything, from strippers on the ice at half-time to bears serving drinks. The viewer was supposed to find all this funny/freaky in a perverse kind of way. Don’t know about you, but I tend to have a

sense of humour failure around performing bears.

The whole thing was too

self-consciously “I’m mad me” wacky, starting but not ending with our Steve. By the time the Russian mafia got their hooks in and events took a turn for the seriously ugly, the shift in tone was jarring. Less would have been so much more with this subject.

Luxury Christmas for Less (Channel 4, Monday) was fronted by likeable consumer champions Sabrina Grant and Helen Skelton. “After the year we’ve all had there’s only one thing that can save 2020,” they announced. “A cracking Christmas crammed with luxury trimmings.” Clearly the show was in the can before Santa, aided by the pharmaceutical industry, came up with the vaccine.

Some of the top tips were as tired as last year’s salvaged wrapping paper. Who doesn’t know there are terrific products at cheap prices in discount supermarkets,

or that stores

pump in the Christmas music to get you in the mood to overspend? At an hour it

was thin stuff.

Hurrah for Yasmeen, whose victory over awful Geoff was a stirring sight to behold in Coronation Street (STV, Monday to Friday).

Justice seems to move at lightning speeds in Weatherfield, with

the period from crime to doing time (or not, in Yasmeen’s case) a relative blink of a judge’s eye.

Now that Imran is a

hotshot trial-winning lawyer perhaps he can be persuaded to ditch that coat of his, which is even more awful than awful Geoff.

As for the big 6oth anniversary episode on Wednesday – it had its moments, but the stand-off over the flats is no Pat Phelan on the rampage. Or Ken and Deirdre breaking up and making up. Or poor Rita, running for her life in Blackpool.

Still, we shall keep the faith and carry on. We owe Corrie that much, and more.