WHEN he was making Paxman: Putting Up with Parkinson’s (STV, Tuesday), the former Newsnight anchor and University Challenge quiz master was certain about one thing: he wasn’t going to “blub” on camera.

“I don’t want to be involved in the production of a film that is in any way encouraging of ‘poor little me syndrome’,” we saw him telling the film’s director, Michael Waldman.

He was true to his word. That did not stop this documentary from being the most poignant programme of the week.

Paxman found out he had Parkinson’s after falling in the street. It was while in A&E that a neurologist spotted him and came over for a chat. The consultant had been watching University Challenge, and thought Paxman's face looked masked and expressionless, a sign of Parkinson’s. Paxman just thought he was getting old. Being 71, as he was then, will do that to a chap.

As we watched Paxman doing his job as a journalist, explaining Parkinson's, interviewing experts, talking to people with the condition, he seemed determined to keep a professional distance. It couldn’t last.

While he kept insisting that compared to others he was doing fine, he was obviously changed by the illness and understandably down about it. “I’m beaten and I’m dejected,” he told his physio. “You always try to tell me it’s not all doom and gloom, but it is all doom and gloom.” With no cure in sight, it was a case, as the title said, of putting up with Parkinson’s.

Showing his vulnerability took away nothing from Paxman's journalism. If anything it made it more powerful. There is a lot of bobbins spoken about bravery and illness, but it took courage to put his decline on show. As one interviewee put it, there is nothing to be ashamed in having Parkinson's but somehow people’s natural inclination was to hide away. Paxman has not done that. He’s still “in there” and out there, doing what he can for now. It was heartening to see.

Just one moan: unlike Paxman the music was intent on plucking heartstrings, often laughably so. The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve? Seriously? Drive by The Cars must have been unavailable.

The best writing of the week was to be found in Ralph & Katie (BBC1, Wednesday). If you are a fan of The A Word (and if you’re not, get out my pub), you will be familiar with Peter Bowker and the inspired way he writes about disability. He does other stuff as well, but his no fuss, deeply humane approach makes anything he writes on this subject a must-watch.

Ralph & Katie takes up the story of two newly wed characters in The A Word, played by Leon Harrop and Sarah Gordy, both of whom, like their characters, have Down’s. In each half hour episode nothing world-changing happens, it’s just the everyday stuff of home and work and friendship, and that’s the point. Great to see Pooky Quesnel back as Ralph’s indomitable mum, and Craig Cash, as the couple’s nice but nosey neighbour, is a welcome addition.

Being the true story about a group of far-right knuckledraggers, The Walk-In (STV, Monday) was predictably tough-going. Stephen Graham played anti-fascist activist Matthew Collins. Dangerous work, hence the need to move his family from one safe house to another, much to his wife’s dismay.

After opening with a horrific attack in a shop, the first episode included the murder of Jo Cox MP. Viewers did not see it but the sound was enough. Add to this horror having to listen to the rantings of thugs and The Walk-In was asking a lot of viewers, perhaps too much.

I gave Inside Man (BBC1, Monday/Tuesday) the chance to run its four part course, just in case I was missing something. Starring David Tennant and Stanley Tucci, written by Steven “Doctor Who” Moffat, this tale of murder and mix ups seemed to have it all. So why was it so annoying?

For a start, the plot, Tucci as a death row inmate in America solving a crime in England involving Tennant’s vicar, was the definition of trying too hard. There’s clever, and there’s too clever by half. Yet it wasn’t actually clever at all. Despite the twists and cliffhanger endings you knew from early doors how things were going to pan out.

The humour was dark and edgy, but forgive me if I don’t chuckle along with jokes about the killing of women.

While Tucci was his usual excellent self as a charming psychopath, the whole Hannibal Lecter thing has been done to death.

There were some bright points, chief among them the performance of Kate Dickie as a sarky Scottish burglar.

Yet after four hours the main thing this viewer took away was a fresh admiration for the Coen brothers.