TELEVISION: Freaks, saints and a light teenage toasting for MC Tony B

That's So... Last Week Five Bodyshock: The Man Who Slept for 19 Years Channel 4 Ahead of the Class ITV Tony and June Channel 4

`I want programmes about people. Interesting people," a friend was told by a TV executive. "What sort of people?" he asked. "You know, interesting. Unusual. Like kids with huge tumours on their faces."

It tells us a lot about us - and not particularly edifying things - when we think about the sorts of people whom TV folk think we want to watch. Particularly on Channel 4, it seems. The freakishly unusual (Little Lady Fauntleroy), the ghoulish (Anatomy for Beginners), the nasty (Wife Swap) and the cruel (Big Brother). All these are served up for us in the name of "education". But these programmes are only educative in the way that those 19th-century freakshow fans were educated when they went to poke, laugh or stare at the Elephant Man.

The modern obsession with celebrity goes hand in glove with this freakshow stuff. Witness Five's new gossip show That's So... Last Week. Presented by irritatingly smug Scotsman Dougie Anderson, the show is a TV version of Heat magazine. "Your one-stop shop for all things celebrity," Dougie describes it. Fear of endorsing anything - for fear that it might turn out uncool - leads the show to diss everything and everyone. Dougie is joined by a posse of twentysomethings, whose job it is to come up with gross-out "witty" one-liners. "Like Barbara Cartland's clitoris," was how one wag described the dissected skin he'd seen on last week's anatomy programme. Then there was plenty of uninformed speculation about Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz's sex life. And that was about it. Do you care? Do you think it's funny? If so, you're reading the wrong newspaper, because that's so... rubbish.

A more traditional freakshow programme was on offer with Bodyshock: The Man Who Slept for 19 Years, which told of the "miracle" restoration of hillbilly car-crash victim Terry Wallis. Terry had "woken up" after nearly two decades in a vegetative coma. The facts were more prosaic than the programme's title suggested. Terry had indeed "woken up", in a manner of speaking. He is conscious. He can talk. But his words are inaudibly slurred, he is brain damaged and is unable to learn any new facts. He was unable, for example, to understand that the 20-year-old woman at his bedside was the baby daughter he'd left behind. The film-makers followed Terry and family on a trip to New York in the hope of finding further progress. They failed.

But this disappointment forced the producers into making a more interesting programme than they otherwise might have. Faced with an uninteresting story about Terry, they supplemented it with a straightforward film about coma: what it is, how it happens and how recovery can progress. This part of the programme was by far the most illuminating. Almost by accident, the Bodyshock producers came up with an interesting film.

A different kind of "miracle" was performed by Lady Stubbs (Julie Walters) at St George's School, Westminster, in Ahead of the Class. Far from the celebrity knocking copy of That's So... Last Week, this came close to hagiography. Hardly surprising, since the film was based on Stubbs' autobiography, and she clearly thinks highly of herself. Sent in to take charge at a violent failing Catholic school - the place where headmaster Philip Lawrence had been murdered - Stubbs overcame staff, pupil and diocesean opposition to turn the institution round. It all looked so easy. A mixture of solid common sense, appeals to the pupils' good nature and a dollopful of religiosity are all it seems to take to turn hardened villains into solid pupils.

"Find yourself another school, love," the caretaker warns a pupil at the film's opening. "This one's no good anymore." By the end, as the happy pupils put on a heartwarming school play, the same caretaker is ecstatic: "They don't want to leave, Lady Stubbs. You've made it a good place to be."

I generally loathe the conflation of truth and fiction which drama-documentaries demand and Ahead of the Class demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of the genre. It was well acted: Julie Walters seems to get better with age, and it was good to see Tony Slattery's return to our screens as the hardened old cynical teacher won round by Lady Stubbs' determination. It was tightly directed and well shot. But it was also pretty unbelievable: if turning round failing schools were as simple as this film suggested, then there would be no schools crisis at all. Compressing the events of months and years into two hours only exacerbated the incredulity: one minute we saw a pupil causing mayhem and then - after one chat with the head - they were transformed into model students.

Less forgivable was a hagiography on Channel 4's teenage slot, T4, which slavishly followed the Prime Minister on Tony and June. Presenter June Sarpong breathlessly trailed - and sycophantically giggled - in Tony's footsteps for 24 hours. June admired the PM's hectic schedule ("It's not all glitz and glamour being Prime Minister: I don't know how you do it") as he toured the North East. The nearest that June came to a scoop was when she learned that Tony used to fancy Grace Kelly. Gee whizz.

The filmed clips were followed by a studio "grilling" for Blair, although perhaps "gentle warming" would be a more accurate term. Thirty-five young viewers were on hand to cross-question the premier. To be fair to Tony, this could have been a bit tricky - had the youngsters been well briefed or properly handled. Remember that BBC Scotland programme called Open To Question, in which great and good were cut down to size by a knowledgeable and canny group of schoolkids? But, to Tony's relief, this crowd were far less focused. They interrupted each other, argued among themselves, shook heads and jabbed fingers. Meanwhile, Blair sat quietly, and politely allowed the kids to rubbish each other. The Blair circle have made a conscious and canny decision to appear on unfamiliar programmes: Richard and Judy, local news, now T4. It means that a wider audience hears them and, of course, that nervous and forelock-tugging interviewers give them a far easier ride than they'd get from Dimbleby or Paxman. Even without a disfiguring disease, Tony Blair is a worthy subject for rigorous television scrutiny. Congratulations to T4 on bagging the interview. Shame they blew it.

c.courtauld@independent.co.uk