Sticks and Stones, UTV, Monday at 9pm
IF ever there was a sign that there is too much drama on television, it's the new ITV effort Sticks and Stones.
Between the terrestrial broadcasters and subscription streamers there is an oversupply of drama and box sets.
It's only natural that as the quantity goes up the quality will fall down.
It crashed back to earth with Sticks and Stones.
It tells the story of Thomas Benson, a middle manager in a marketing company, who is subject to workplace bullying after failing to land a big contract.
Thomas (Ken Nwosu) is sabotaged by subordinate rivals and faints at a presentation.
He then falls into "the grip" (of fear) and his life begins to fall apart so spectacularly that I began to think it was a farce.
At one stage in the opening episode he has a succession of mishaps of Laurel and Hardy proportions.
After collapsing in front of the chief executive of Murray Technology, he waits in her car park and harangues her for another meeting.
Somehow she arranges to meet him for dinner that night only Thomas, whose phone and iPad time setting have been changed by his rivals, leaves the restaurant before she arrives.
When he discovers the plot he is at home in his pyjamas and about to get into bed. He grabs his coat and speeds to the scene of the crime to see a junior work colleague sitting in his place.
When he tries to intervene, clad in his nightwear, he is pulled back by another watching junior colleague who explains that they tricked him for the good of the team and all that mattered was getting the contract.
At that moment, she points out that his car is being towed away (at 10pm outside a suburban restaurant).
He runs after the car, still in the pyjamas, shouting that his phone is in the car. No wallet, no phone, no money from any of the colleagues.
When he grabs the handle of a taxi door triumphantly after it drops off a passenger at the restaurant, he looks up in horror to find the driver is the father of a school pupil who is bullying his daughter and with who he had had a confrontation with that afternoon.
He walks home forlornly in the PJs.
Lots of other scenes also didn't ring true. At the conclusion of the first episode, Tom finds hundreds of yellow Post-it notes on his desk (they had started out as one or two) pointing out the obvious ("this is a computer") to mock him as stupid.
In any other workplace this would end up with HR suspending the culprits and launching an investigation, but in Sticks and Stones it was script progression.
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The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC 2, Tuesday at 9pm
You can only marvel at the work ethic of the highly successful, with the BBC's political correspondent knocking out this excellent Brexit explainer while continuing the day job.
Kuenssberg needs to be careful though - this kind of drive and ambition may have led to the stroke of one of her predecessors, Andrew Marr.
And Marr didn't have to put up with the abuse Kuenssberg has taken for simply doing her job.
She's been unfortunate enough to have been in the role in the middle of social media's painful teenage years and also to be the BBC's political correspondent in one of the most fraught political times since the miner's strike.
Still, while Brexit has been tough, she's performed magnificently and all the while taking the sticks and stones on the chin. Bravo.
