Frances Grant: Sex-mad Brits drop standards

Believe it or not television presenter Alison Mau was once a telly critic. It was the "meanest, most dispiriting, soul-sapping" job she ever did, she told the Weekend Herald's canvas magazine.

I'm sorry Ali felt obliged to behave in a way which so demeaned her (who or what was she so unfair to?) but it's a shame she missed the finer points and enjoyments of the job. TV reviewers can praise a show, for example, if they come across something good, or have the pleasure of examining the intriguing cultural phenomena which the medium sometimes gives rise to.

It's thrilling to note, for example, that in Britain, after much careful deliberation, the telly watchdogs have ruled that "a pig sexually pleasured on television did not feel degraded by the experience". A newspaper reported that dozens of viewers complained about an episode in a familiar-sounding reality telly show, The Farm, in which celebs were sent on agricultural work experience.

Among the stellar cast was the self-proclaimed lover of David Beckham, Rebecca Loos, who was given the job of stimulating a boar to produce a flask of semen. Some viewers felt this was rather sordid, bordering on bestial, even. But the authorities ruled that unblushing Britannia could handle this.

This marvellous tolerance for a wide range of sexual or reproductive activities goes a long way towards explaining this week's Sunday Theatre, The Private Life of Samuel Pepys. The word "private" in the title of this period romp about the famous 17th-century diarist said it all. Perhaps the makers should just have called it the Samuel Pepys show.

It opened with an incarcerated Sam bonking a lady friend through the bars of the Tower of London, a scene which would make any porcine activity look terribly tasteful by comparison. Things regressed from there.

Pepys was witness to all sorts of political intrigue but this drama was having none of that, treating us instead to crucial episodes ("use your finger!") in the hapless lover's sexual education. Oliver Cromwell's supporters had vanished, the Puritans were on the out. Bring them back, you pleaded. If this was what 17th-century eroticism was like, you could understand their drive to stamp it out. And look where it has led to.

The mad Brit bonking season is on in earnest. Even the demure old Inspector Lynley Mysteries on Saturday night featured a Cambridge where everyone — even the tweediest of the academics — was getting theirs, and then some.

Restraint is so far being exercised in new Brit drama Trust but this is a show about overworked corporate lawyers. By the end of last week's first episode, however, the cracks were showing, with the hot young assistant taking advantage of an unguarded moment to snog the boss. There you go — you cannot have Robson Green in a drama and not have sex in it.

Meanwhile, another new Brit drama Between the Sheets, has more than sex; we get the therapy, too. Wife Hazel's sex-counselling homework comes straight from Lady Chatterley's Lover. Husband Peter owns a club, a kind of transatlantic Bada-bing, which means lots of breasts and more babes than Baywatch.

There's another point about the TV critic's lot which Ali failed to mention — the stress of picking one's way through the minefield that is the contradictory human telly-watching condition. The Sydney Morning Herald reports Aussies have voted Baywatch the worst American TV show yet made. It also notes that Baywatch has been the most popular show on the planet.

What to do? They know it's trash but love it anyway. You tell 'em it's trash and they complain you've got a mean streak.