BRIGHTON. By day it is fun, sea, and seriously silly property prices. After dark it would give Sodom and Gomorrah a run for its money, or at least that’s the way the place was presented in Night Coppers (Channel 4, Tuesday). Imagine what it would be like without the police?

That was the question posed by this slickly made documentary series. Telly loves to follow cops, particularly if there is a chance trouble will kick off, and there was plenty of that in Brighton. All human life was there, it was very drunk, and it wanted a fight and a kebab.

It is a world portrayed recently in the terrific Martin Freeman drama, The Responder. Night Coppers was the reality, an environment best experienced from the comfort of your sofa while twentysomethings Matt, Sophie and their colleagues were out there in the cold, managing the chaos.

It’s hardly news that British cities after dark can be horrible places. The focus here, though, was on the police and the individuals behind the uniform who were, to a man and woman, cheery and capable. None of your bad apples here. It would have been a shameless piece of PR, but questions lurked in the background about the nature of the job, and why in some quarters the relationship between the public and the police has become so strained.

Martin Freeman returned elsewhere in Breeders (Sky Comedy, Wednesday). This tale of modern parenting has to be one of the bleakest comedies on television. Its saving grace is that it is also one of the best.

Freeman stars as dad Paul, with the equally excellent Daisy Haggard as wife Ally, and Eve Prenelle and Alex Eastwood as their teenage daughter and son. The third series opener was a nicely judged back and forth from the past to the present involving service station toilets and a missing child. That was the lighter part. Breeders can make you wince, but it knows exactly when to dispense the hugs as well.

Paul Hollywood is an enigma. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. But having watched him on The Great British Bake-Off and now Paul Hollywood Eats Mexico (Channel 4, Sunday), I’m puzzled.

Previously the blue-eyed Scouser ate his way around Japan. Now it’s the turn of Mexico to be one giant tasting menu.

On his travels he visited a shop specialising in pinatas and was much taken with a Homer Simpson one. “Look, he’s got a belly like me,” said Hollywood. Later, a lady biker (long story) told him he was really handsome. “I’m just an old man though,” he replied. Humble, self-deprecating, shy; and there was you thinking that if Hollywood was a chocolate donut he would eat himself.

That’s the mystery of the man. Like his programme he is a strange mix. One minute he’s an ordinary bloke abroad, wide-eyed with amazement; the next he’s an expert talking in detail about a special Mexican bread. Is this a food show, a travel programme, just another vehicle for Hollywood to twinkle through? It’s taco television, a little bit of everything mixed together. Satisfying enough at the time but an hour later you’re hungry for something more substantial.

It was once said witheringly of Michael Heseltine that he was so new money he had to buy his own furniture. The same cannot be said of the Duchess of Cornwall, the subject of a one-off documentary, Camilla's Country Life (STV, Wednesday). As she toured her grandmother’s old house, a stonking great mansion in Hampshire, Camilla pointed out that she now had granny’s chaise, curtains and a bedcover in her own house. She’s proper posh is Camilla, but in the opinion of one of her mates, Jeremy Clarkson, she is also “one of us”, the kind of gal happy to sneak a fag round the back of things. A little bit naughty, but awfully, terribly nice.

Much like Michael Waldman’s film. Given time with the Duchess as she guest edited Country Life’s 125th anniversary edition, the director of Inside the Foreign Office had to choose his moments for a little light impudence carefully. Learning that another duchess, Catherine, had shot the cover picture of her mother-in-law, he asked the magazine's picture editor if the photos had been in focus. “Stop stirring Michael!” he was told.

For a while it seemed as though that spot of unpleasantness in the past, the time of three people in a marriage, was going to be airbrushed out of the picture. Waldman is too smart a filmmaker for that.

There was no asking Camilla about it directly, of course. Dear me no. It was left to a couple of talking heads and a few stills to tell that tale, but it was touched upon.

Otherwise, this was a flattering piece that seemed to say a lot while in reality it revealed little to nothing. Clever Camilla.