n Omnibus: Jeffrey Archer - the Self-Made Man (BBC1, Wednesday) n Berkeley Square (BBC1, Sunday) n Hidden Hollywood (C4, Sunday) n Tee Time (C4, Tuesday)

THE most telling moment in Omnibus: Jeffrey Archer - the Self-Made Man (BBC1, Wednesday) came when he who would be Mayor of London was shadowing the Mayor of New York on the campaign trail. Well, attending a photo opportunity involving a woman in a bright green frog suit, to be precise. The American and Englishman walked side by side in uneasy silence until, aware of the cameras, Archer piped up: ''Well, that was a really good exercise.'' Mayor Giuliani's eyes flickered briefly but eloquently: who is this guy

and how soon can I lose

him? And a nation's toes curled in sympathy.

There is only one significant question to be asked of Lord Archer. Not ''if the purchase of #50,000 of shares in Anglia Television when your wife sat on the board was not insider dealing, what was it?'' No, the question crying out for an answer is ''how do you cope with the embarrassment of being Jeffrey Archer?''

If ever there was a man who elevated shamelessness into an art it is he. Take the famous incident when, having awarded first prize in a short story competition to a tale narrated by a cat, he proceeded to publish - yes - a story narrated by a cat. ''Plagiarism is where you write out line after line after line,'' he explained patiently. ''You won't find any two words following in that story that are in mine.'' So that's all right, then.

Deep down - or maybe shallowly down - we seem to need people like Archer, people who offer walking proof that life is, after all, very simple. You find a goal to strive towards, you work ''damned hard'', you become the fastest, the best-selling, the richest, and then you get yourself another goal. And we the public look at him and think, yes, it might be nice to enjoy that life, but not if the price were being Jeffrey Archer.

This was a gentle profile, utterly lacking in indignation, relying instead on a persistent mickey-taking. But Archer defies mockery, as he does shame. His (unauthorised) biographer, Michael Crick, believes he is unable to distinguish between ''truth and what he'd like to be the truth, and what he's seen in fiction, and what he's written in fiction''. A fairly implausible thesis, but then Archer is a fairly implausible character. Watching him ambushing voters on the by-election trail, or pep-talking Tory campaign workers, or swopping insults with Tarby at a charity auction, he never seemed quite real. Less a self-made man than a self-assembled android.

What naked cynicism has gone into the devising of Berkeley Square (BBC1, Sunday). The competition, ITV's schmaltzy Where the Heart Is (ITV, Sunday), has district nurses; the Beeb trumps that with nannies. ITV has two women; the Beeb has three. ITV repeats the couthy Yorkshire formula that went down a storm in Heartbeat. BBC puts its heroines in long frocks (can Mr Darcy be far behind?) Our three

Victorian nannies are as cannily complementary as the Spice Girls. Cockney Nanny was born down the Commercial Road. (Her

great-granddaughter will probably grow up to blag a train in a Lynda La Plante series.) Bumpkin Nanny, second cousin of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, has country manners but a good heart. And Ballykissangel Nanny is a spirited Irish lass who was put in the family way by the son of the manor before he very inconsiderately died.

Already it is obvious that Cockney Nanny will fall for the loveable rogue on the run after a bare-knuckle boxing bout went wrong. And according to my trusty Radio Times we can expect a bit of hurly-burly on the chaise longue involving Bumpkin Nanny, too. Sex, class, Edwardian costume, fascinating facts about turn-of-the-century child care: what more could the Sunday viewer want? Quite a lot actually.

My Fair Lady as an allegory of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, with Audrey Hepburn's Eliza learning to dress and talk proper just as the refugees from the pogroms had to? So it was claimed in Hidden Hollywood (C4, Sunday), an exploration of how a group of Eastern European Jews created a celluloid mythology informed by their own experience as outsiders, which was taken to the national bosom as the American Dream.

So far so familiar. More intriguing were those ingenious theories about the subtextual meaning of classic American movies. Jimmy Stewart's trademark portrayals of small-town integrity as versions of ''the little Jewish guy''? A scene from the Disney film An American Tail as a recreation of the pogroms? The giant ape in King Kong as a cipher for the immigrant outsider? Interesting if true.

Chris Evans is a celebrity yob, a thrower of bread rolls in the fancy restaurant of life, a cheeky boy who has made a million (or 30) out of his own arrested development. Nothing particularly original about that, but Evans has one special quality: the boundlessness of his self-love. This is what elevates TFI Friday above other

space-filling exercises in celebrity silliness. It is difficult to watch a man so blatantly besotted with himself and not to feel a little beguiled.

But, dear oh dear, what has happened to Evans's self-love in Tee Time (C4, Tuesday)? Could it be that he is experiencing an unwonted attack of modesty on account of his manifest deficiencies on the golf course? Or is it just that, after a gruelling stint in showbiz, he reckoned he deserved a nice long holiday, and discovered that Channel 4 was mug enough to foot the bill? He crept round that Florida golf course almost shyly, dressed in black, his features hidden under sunglasses and a baseball cap, his charisma likewise concealed. While it was mildly interesting to watch an alligator trapper at work around the 11th hole, and to learn that diving for lost golf balls is big business, this was a show more suited to the daytime schedules than to 8pm midweek.