Broadcast to coincide with the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, Life is the latest instalment in a series that started right back in 1979 with Life on Earth. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a David Attenborough documentary, as ever stunning time-lapse and slow motion shots are perfectly combined with David’s calm kindly tones. It’s impossible not to be infected with his sense of enthusiasm and wonder for the natural world.

It's week 7, which means you're probably drowning in a sea of essays or formulas and will, therefore, be in need of a break soon. Don't have a Kit Kat. Watch Fringe instead, the latest brainchild from household name producer J.J. Abrams, the man behind Lost and this year's reboot of Star Trek.

In the few days before I got around to watching Question Time on iPlayer I became worried that I was going to feel sorry for Nick Griffin. Sure, he’s a far-right douchebag, but I imagined that the mauling I was about to witness might provoke some essential human compassion, the kind that kicks in when you see somebody being persecuted. I pictured Griffin spending the allotted hour in the stocks, as the sneering audience took turns to smear their excrement on his face. Each of them would turn to David Dimbleby like participants in a televised Milgram experiment: ‘Is this really OK, Mr Dimbleby? Can I really smear my poo on his face?’ Dimbleby would give a sombre nod to each, and Griffin would be reduced to deliriously babbling bits from Mein Kampf.

When The Thick of It first arrived on our screens in 2005, it did so in the most inconspicous of circumstances, broadcast late at night during the week on BBC Four. Thanks to a steadily growing fanbase, endless amounts of critical acclaim and a relatively successful feature-length spinoff, In the Loop, its new series has been granted a prime-time slot on Saturday nights.

For most of us, regardless of gender, childhood was full of grazed knees, snotty noses and perhaps the odd playground romance. This, we assume, is a pretty universal experience. Not so, according to Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change, another triumph of controversy for Channel 4’s documentary series Bodyshock, which documents four transgender children between the ages of 8 and 16. The programme spends most of its fifty minute in a bathroom or hair salon filming 8 year olds being polished, varnished and highlighted (which is as ludicrous as it sounds) as they loudly refer to their genitals as birth defects or physical disabilities. It’s all pretty perplexing stuff, but it’s meant to be.