Television: Class conflict was classier then

THE HOT WATER has been drawn and the old copper is by the nursery fire. Fluffy towels warm on the fender, and a slab of coal-tar soap is in Nanny's hands. There is nothing for it but to slough off those restrictive knickerbockers and sink gratefully into the comforting bath, waiting for the cleansing touch of those strong but gentle fingers. Auntie's fingers.

For it is Sunday night, and it is time for Berkeley Square (BBC1, Sunday), the BBC's latest attempt to rediscover the money-spinning, ratings-capturing, American-satisfying formula that made Upstairs Downstairs. The last, The House of Elliott, was, you will remember, wantonly destroyed in one cruel sketch from French and Saunders.

But this one may yet succeed. The very opening caption, "London 1902" - over a shot of a Palladian street (all hydrants and telephone poles cunningly disguised), full of crinolines, hoops, horses and De Dion Boutons - was somehow comforting. Such a spiffing year, 1902: the Great War has not happened, the Empire is at its apogee, Wales is still full of miners, and the countryside is populated by labourers with those funny chin-beards. And above all, the English Class System is alive and well, and making for great plots.

Three great plots, in fact, as Essie, Bessie and Dessie each move from their respectively obscure origins to find employment in the town houses of the rich. Actually, they are called Tilda, Lydia (the impressive Tabitha Wady) and Hannah. And they have been carefully selected to represent the full variety of class possibilities.

Tilda (East End gel, canny) is in the house with the Unhappy Marriage ("Not now, Arnold!"), and the cook with the Terrible Secret. Lydia (village lass and kindly) is apprenticed to the home with the bright, modern American mistress and ancient, snobby nanny. And Hannah is the Irish single mum (her lover was a duke's son who was killed in a tragic accident), drummed out of Yorkshire by men who bang pans in the night outside the homes of fallen women, who has to hide her shame and find work.

Interestingly, among the hidebound working classes it the male who is dominant, violent and repressive, terrorising his wives and daughters. But the further up the social scale you go, the women take over, the men being unobtrusive butlers or reclusive lords, always away on business.

This opens the door to some splendid woman-to-woman dramatic moments, and in episode one there were at least two Hollywoodish impassioned "reach- for-the-stars" speeches, delivered from older to younger women. Number one was from Lydia's downtrodden old mum (39, and worn out from the breeding), who gave us a defiant "You go to Lunnon, my girl, wash your face in warm water," until tears ran down mother's, daughter's, and reviewer's faces. Then Mrs Bronowski, a refugee who lost her baby to the Cossacks near Gdansk, exhorts Hannah to courage. "I look at you and I see me. I see a voman who don't give up." More tears. We were only missing a cameo performance from Robin Williams as the man who makes Tilda realise that she is a mathematical genius and helps her get elected to parliament.

In those days they had more class conflict, but fewer cars. In fact, in the BBC's 1902, they only had two cars in the whole of London. But now that classes no longer fight each other, our battles have become more individual and less collective. And nowhere are these fights more vicious than when they concern the motor car. Which is why Clampers (BBC1, Monday), the docusoap which follows the parking wardens, clampers and bailiffs of the London borough of Southwark, feels so much like a report from society's front line.

The proposition is quite simple (though, naturally, never articulated in a programme that eschewed all analysis and most information): our own cars are necessary and good. But the cars of others are a menace to society, creating traffic jams and being parked irresponsibly. This makes the traffic warden a highly ambivalent figure. Without her, we are doomed to blocked streets and car-packed pavements. But she also is a bloody nuisance, lurking behind a hedge until we decamp for 30 seconds to take the kids into school and then sadistically plonking a ticket on our windows, smiling all the while the thin smile of a jobsworth well done.

Ray, the happy, camp clamper anti-hero, is a marvellous find for any docusoapary. Elongated and bearded, he is a malign version of Jeremy from Airport - the Wicked Fairy from Sleeping Beauty as opposed to Cinderella's magical godmother. He rides the van with the sliding door, barking orders and occasional bitchery at his Portuguese sidekick, Miguel - whose dreadful English does not really permit adequate reply.

Ray's great virtue is that he repays abuse with spite. He does it pre- emptively, in fact. He clamps your car precisely because he knows that you will call him a wanker (or - as one agitated man did - compare him to a genocidal Nazi engaged in the Final Solution). So he does it to you before you do it to him.

He's right, too. The pathetic and mendacious excuses routinely used by drivers flouting the law made me wince, though I suppose it's possible that all the conscientious ones who said "I'm sorry, I won't do it again," were edited out.

Though Clampers is utterly devoid of context (why exactly was there a yellow line just outside Mr Gas Chambers's house? Could no one actually ask the council?), it is certainly full of comedy. The scene in which Ray and Miguel got lost on the way to a "Code Red" incident (warden under attack), was the funniest telly of the week. Ray berated Miguel for losing the A-Z that he had been bought only the week before. Goaded beyond endurance as they sped pointlessly round south London, Miguel hit back. "I don' know the bloody road, dat one I forget de fockin' A- Z all time." Right on, Miguel.

Ray's perpetual battle with indignity was summed up in a sequence when - as he prepared to go out clubbing - his cat leapt upon the red loo- seat in the all-red bathroom, lost its balance, and fell into the bowl. It was fished out and dried off, and I wondered whether perhaps, once upon a time, Ray had clamped a TV producer's car. But no, I'm sure you will find that Julian or Charlotte were just doing their jobs.

They pulled a flanker on Bill Oddie too, this week, in Birding with Bill Oddie (BBC2, Monday), the first of a new series aimed at armchair twitchers. What? No, of course I don't mean that there is some strange cult which specialises in tugging at furniture; I am talking about those who would like to go twitching birds, as it's known, but have to stay ... Oh, never mind.

Any road, Bill was up in Shetland, so naturally we followed him up the cliffs to look at sea birds. "There are," he told us innocently, "a few shags down there." And Charlotte or Julian immediately cut to a pair of tufted somethingorothers having an avian bonk at the foot of the cliff. Ho ho ho.

I am not a bird-lover myself, and found some of Bill's excitement at getting within three feet of puffins a bit difficult to share. But when he caught sight of a blue-cheeked bee-eater (a lovely looking thing with turquoise side bits) I was happy to look at it, interested that it normally lived in eastern Turkey, and intrigued by Oddie's explanation that, in essence, "A rare bird is a lost bird." How true that is.

But if what is rare is often lost, the same is not true the other way round. Take golf balls. As Tee Time (Channel 4, Tuesday) revealed, six million golf balls are lost every year in Florida alone. That, in fact, was just about the only thing that Tee Time did reveal, except the age- old adage that "to him that hath, shall be given". For this is a series in which Chris Evans (who hath in abundance) gets to go golfing round the world, and disappears for most of the filming, but which is made by his company, Ginger Productions, and for which he is the executive producer. It's not a freebie, it's a new thing - the bepaidshitloadsbie.

But the thing that I don't understand is why a fit, rich young 32-year- old should waste his time taking up a sport that is visually tedious, physically unchallenging, unsociable, and populated by some of the world's most ill-tempered bores. This guy can go to any match, any opera, any ancient site, any bordello on any continent - and he goes golfing in Geriatrica.

So perhaps the best bit of the first episode was when we were told about how alligators get into the water features on Florida golf-courses, presenting a hazard to incompetent golfers who put their arms into the ponds to retrieve lost balls or thrown irons. Specialist alligator-catchers are employed to get rid of this threat to Evans and company. But, if we all club together, perhaps we can outbid the golfers and pay the 'gator men to strew the courses of the world with thousands of vicious saurians. It would give a whole new meaning to the word "handicap".