IN my capacity as an unlicensed chauffeur (airport runs a speciality) I went to Ikea last weekend for a pick-up. As I waited outside a squad of Japanese soldiers emerged asking if the war was still going on. Behind them was a wild-eyed couple babbling about only having popped in for a bag of tea lights five years ago. That’s the Swedish furniture giant for you. As one shopper said in Flatpack Empire (BBC2, Tuesday, 9pm), “As soon as yer in, ye can’t get out.” Michael Corleone once said the same of the Mafia.

As Tom Swingler’s film boasted, this was the first time in the firm’s 70-year history that the management had allowed cameras in for a poke behind the scenes. At first it hardly seemed worth the wait. Despite everyone saying how extraordinary an outfit Ikea was, there did not seem much that was remarkable aside from the staff’s near religious dedication to selling flatpack furniture.

More promising was a peek at the collaboration between Ikea and Tom Dixon, described as an “enfant terrible” of British design. Tom was working on a bed that could double as a sofa. “It’s not a sofa bed, he explained,“it’s a bed sofa. But it’s really a platform for living.” You can see how Tom earned that enfant terrible label.

For all the lack of excitement, the programme was a curiously compelling watch, as if whatever mysterious pull the stores exert had transferred to television. How else to explain why, after an hour of Swingler’s film, I spent an age on the firm’s website looking at Dixon’s bed/ sofa/hingamyjig. No, this wasn’t free advertising at all.

The only thing being punted on Endeavour (ITV Sunday, 8pm) was good old fashioned class warfare. As the 1960s headed to a close, Morse and his boss DI Fred Thursday (Shaun Evans and Roger Allam) were investigating a series of murders linked to an Oxford dining club notorious for smashing up restaurants and other high jinks. Where do these writers get their wild ideas from?

Even after all this time I still cannot quite buy Evans as the man who would one day be John Thaw. The Scouse twang continues to confuse. That doesn’t spoil the enjoyment, though. I’m rather partial to the sarky pathologist Dr Max Debryn who this week, asked about a cause of death, sighed: “His head’s in this room and his body’s in the other. That might have something to do with it”. But the star turn continues to be Roger Allam’s Thursday, a toweringly decent man whose rants are rare but always magnificent. While the murders are a bit of a downer, it is a crime drama. Omelettes, eggs and all that.

There was a lot of egg breaking going on as Spiral (BBC4, Saturday, 9pm) cruelly came to an end for another while. Why do the French writers need such a long break between series? They seem to work shorter hours than the country’s air traffic controllers. Laure (Caroline Proust) closed the series as she began, fretting over whether she could cope as a single mother to baby Romy. What a gut-wrencher of a final scene. Everything is now perfectly set for what is rumoured to be a last series. Whenever you are ready, mes amis.

There was a young Laure-type on The Secret Life of Five-Year-Olds: All Girls (Channel 4, Tuesday, 8pm), a special edition of the Channel 4 hit to mark 100 years since some women got the vote. Jet was her name. While the other girls were oohing and aahing over dolls, dresses and a hair salon, Jet was happy playing football. Good for her was the experts’ verdict, and so say all of us.

There were tears before bedtime, but not from Jet. Darcy had the swing vote in a poll to decide whether the group should take part in the Tunnel of Terror activity or a game of Hug a Duck. Darcy, despite all evidence confirming her parents’ view of her as a “girly girl” chose the tunnel, which she promptly hated and refused to go in. “I shouldn’t have chosen it,” she wailed. And there was your EU referendum vote right there. Sir John Curtice, eat your heart out.

The only downside to a wonderfully funny and enlightening programme was that the furthest north the producers had gone in search of participants appeared to be Newcastle. We’ve got five-year-olds up here too, folks. But you couldn’t stay mad for long at a programme that wheeled the grannies on at the end.

“This is gran,” said a nipper, introducing the elderly lady at her side.

“Do you know what her ACTUAL name is?” asked the interviewer.

“Her ACTUAL name is gran.”

The X-Files (Monday, Channel 5, 9pm) was back for series number 11. I last dipped into Chris Carter’s science fiction caper when Endeavour was an overly serious five-year-old. Nothing has changed. Mulder. Scully. Smoking man. Aliens. Bonkers. Taxi!