The week in TV: Eden: Paradise Lost; Citizen Jane; Utopia: In Search of the Dream; Trust Me; Diana: In Her Own Words – The Guardian

His own worst enemy: Anton, a participant in Channel 4s Eden. Photograph: C4

Eden: Paradise Lost (C4) | All 4 Citizen Jane (BBC4) | iPlayer Utopia: In Search of the Dream (BBC4) | iPlayer Trust Me (BBC1) | iPlayer Diana: In Her Own Words (C4) | All 4Eden, the Channel 4 year-long reality experiment in the wilds of Scotland that famously went wildly wrong, suddenly resurfaced in a week-long coda, Paradise Lost, in which the producers sought to excuse their mistakes by giving us more of the same: inanity, truculence, the milk of human kindness openly curdling. It was a grim watch, made brief fun only by our knowledge that the contestants emerged from their months of fame-seeking to discover the show had long been cancelled: more of Britain had watched Cash in the Attic. Chief problem was apparently that, as one of the women said, it turned into just a penis size matching competition.

It has been said more succinctly, but we knew what she meant. The main swinging dicks were Titch, presumably named for the breadth of his non-swearing vocabulary, and Anton, a lumbering, infuriating soul and his own worst enemy: every hour last week I was waiting to see Anton decked.

Here was a generation brought up to believe in their right to believe in themselves, if not actually be good at anything

Given my feelings of depression and boredom and that was only in three or four nights watching goodness knows what it was like for the participants. There was some revolting misogyny, but there was also some savage incompetence. A hunter who couldnt hunt, a gardener who couldnt weed, a chef who seemed only to plunge knives into peoples backs. No one count them, none appeared to take more than the briefest of seconds, in a whole almost-year, to drink in the beauty of the Ardnamurchan peninsula, fresh startled every morning, or to read half a book, or teach others about anything.

Here was a generation brought up to believe in their inalienable right to believe in themselves, if not to be actually good at anything, who, for all their easy talk of democracy, had forgotten how to count the very thing, as witnessed in the shoddy voting-out of Anton. By the end I just felt sorry for the midges.

Far more instructive, hopeful even, in terms of a slice of paradise on Earth was Citizen Jane, a masterly film on the battle for the soul of a city. New York, as it happens, and a battle fought from the 30s to the 70s, but it encapsulated much of the soul of the 20th century.

On the one hand, city developer Robert Moses, in increasing thrall to the automobile, and the utopian blandishments of Corbusian modernism. On the other, Jane Jacobs, a phenomenally articulate writer. Her every sentence sang off the screen: Projects that are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life civic centres that are avoided by anyone except bums.

Jacobs understood, viscerally in the main but also through exhaustive empirical research, that cities cannot be built top-down, by even well-intentioned gods (and here I was minded of the soaraway success of SimCity). Buildings that turn their backs on the streets; expressways that eviscerate. She went to war against Moses and his armies, arguing instead for short blocks, myriad channels, a mix of old and new buildings, constant connections with neighbourhoods. Jacobss mantra was: There is no logic that can be superimposed: people make the city.

There was great footage of Little Italy in 1962: flashing-eyed women arguing that the streets were immensely safer there. Two-three in the morning, the men are sitting in the cafes and theyre watching for you. And there were grim lessons from 50s slum resettlement in Baltimore, the replacing of neighbourhoods with sanitised architectural housing projects that had turned within nine years into some of the most dangerous places in the world. We saw, in turn, their late 90s demolition: literally, a bonfire of the vanities. China is currently engaged in Brobdingnagian urban expansion and has decided its template will be exactly that failed 1950s American model.

BBC4 is also giving us a highly promising three-parter, Utopia: In Search of the Dream, and art historian Richard Clay has already managed, without straining, to link Thomas Spences commons of shared ownership, via George Bernard Shaw and Star Treks Gene Roddenberry, directly to Wikipedia. Its intellectually splendid. We saw a flash-forward to this weeks second episode, and a keen-eyed young black architect enthusing: We are declaring war on the slums! The words of Robert Moses, 80years on.

I almost stopped watching TrustMe, BBC1s new four-part drama, 10 minutes in, when the already semi-daft plot dunked its head into simple medical ignorance. Jodie Whittakers angelic if stroppy nurse Cath, trying to expose hospital abuses in Sheffield, is given her perfunctory jotters: shamed and angry, she (somewhat inexplicably) decides to steal her best pals identity, pretend to be a full doctor and gets a whizzy new job in Edinburgh. Shes welcomed north with more friendship, and certainly a greater lack of credential-checking, than greeted the announcement of the actress as the next Doctor Who.

Sharon Small is Brigitte, Caths stressy new Scots boss, and wonders: So why here? This place is a backward step, surely? this isnt exactly a centre of excellence.

Diana was not a republican (the clue coming in the fact that she wanted her son to be king)

Say what? It gave its name the Edinburgh Model to global teaching systems: its graduates founded five of the seven Ivy League medical schools. The storyline was fullof such sillies. The Sheffield reporter who insisted that Cath herselfgo public and personal (absolutely no need) with her whistleblowing, and thus lost the story; the absurd ease with which Cath multitasks upheaval, a daughter, a new affair and speed-reading Surgery for Dummies from her gown pocket: if a patient arrived in A&E up here boasting as many plot holes, theyd be borrowed for a string vest.

They might just seem surface sillies, but Ill warrant a writer such as Jed Mercurio would have taken better chances to tell more sober truths aboutwhistleblowing, along with the drama. Yet Ill stick with it, mainly to see if the plot manages to extricate itself from the roils of its own entrails and to enjoy a good cast.

What did we learn from Diana: In Her Own Words? Barring a couple of swipes at those who cant answer back, and the fact that such shows will resort to much padding, and that the exceedingly posh and coy Diana was, despite strident claims from the misguided, not a republican (the clue coming in the fact that she wanted her son to be king), Id have to say a big fat jack. What learned, though, from the weeks of hissy furore between Channel 4s right to broadcast private recordings of Diana, and her sons rights to a quiet life? Those twin British failings a capacity for self-deception and love of deference are alive and kicking today: it might be 2017 rather than 1953, but millennialsare keen to bend the knee anew.

Read more:

The week in TV: Eden: Paradise Lost; Citizen Jane; Utopia: In Search of the Dream; Trust Me; Diana: In Her Own Words - The Guardian