A VIEWER has to be Quick Draw McGraw with the remote control in these parts. It is not the mumbling that is the problem. Subtitles long ago took care of that. It is the varying volume between programmes.

On one show it is too low, on another too high. The unwary can get quite the fright while switching from, say, Marcus Wareing’s Tales from a Kitchen Garden, to EastEnders, where everybody shouts all the time, particularly if they are driving a car into the path of an oncoming truck (yes, you Janine).

Everything I Know About Love (BBC1, Tuesday) needed a firm finger on the volume control due to the presence of lots of twenty-something women squealing loudly. How loudly? Imagine if dolphins went on hen nights.

It was 2012 and Maggie (Emma Appleton) and her gal pals had much to squeal about. They had just moved into a house in London town, woo-hoo! They were having their first Friday night out together, woo-hoo! There was booze and drugs and boys and love and they were all going to be best friends forever, double woo-hoo!

We’ve all been there. Well, not me. I was stitched into a cardigan till I was 34. But I’ve heard of such larks, and it did look like fun. For a while, anyway.

The same team that brought Bridget Jones to the screen has had a hand in adapting Dolly Alderton’s memoir, which makes sense. Maggie is a very Bridget kind of character, if much tougher on herself, and we all love a Bridget. For a while, anyway.

By the time Maggie came home smashed, whacked some music on loud and danced round the house in her underwear, I was more than ready to call it a night. Twenty-somethings are great, in small doses, which is how Everything I Know should be consumed.

At least it was good prep for Love Island (ITV2, Monday). You don’t have to watch this annual sun, sea, and sex fest to have something to talk about with the younger people in your life, but it helps.

Love Island likes to keep with tradition, so the new series began with the formal arrival of the women followed by the ceremonial opening of the first bottle of Prosecco.

Hair was flicked, hugs and compliments were exchanged (“You smell amazing!), and Scots narrator Iain Stirling was being sarky for cash. “This year the casting team tracked down the smartest and most talented young people in the country,” he said. Wait for it, wait for it. “And asked them if they had any fit mates who wanted to be on the telly!” Imagine being stuck behind Iain in an airport queue.

This year there is a new twist to proceedings. Instead of contestants choosing who they want to, ahem, “couple up with”, the public does the picking. That would be the same public that gave us Boaty McBoatface and a Tory government. I predict carnage.

In these early visits Love Island can be sweet and daft and funny. The only things likely to scare the horses are the badly fitting bikinis, every one of which seemed to have shrunk in the boil wash. What a depressing commentary on the state of British manufacturing.

After a week or so on Love Island, things tend to take a turn for the tacky and headache-inducing, and you will be desperate for a lie down in a darkened room. Until then enjoy, in small doses.

Perhaps it was guid Scots guilt at watching all this frippery that I was drawn to My Name is Leon (BBC2, Friday). Being a drama about a 10-year-old lad taken into care when his family falls apart, I’ll admit it had a certain “haud me back” air about it. There’s quite enough sadness washing around the world without seeking it out on a Friday night.

But the cast was outstanding – Monica Dolan, Olivia Williams, Christopher Eccleston anyone? – so I bought a ticket. I was glad in the end that I did. Sure enough, it was distressing in parts. The scenes of neglect, and the moment Leon had to say goodbye to his baby brother were a wrench and a half.

Yet there was lightness and love besides. It was refreshing, too, to see a story about care that did not end disastrously or portray social workers as villains. There were no obvious bad sorts here, or selfless angels, just a bunch of averagely flawed adults trying to make the best of a rotten situation.

While the kid (Cole Martin) was great, unfazed by the Bafta winners around him, the gong went to Olivia Williams playing Sylvia, sister to Monica Dolan’s foster carer, Maureen. Sylvia seemed like a horror but turned out to be just the sort of pal it was good to have around in the trenches of life.

Scotland's Home of the Year (BBC1 Scotland, Monday) ended with the sight of two judges in tears over the loveliness of the winner, a croft house in Stornaway. No squealing, just tears of joy. Bravo all.