Alison Rowat

We are not, it is true, the most obviously deserving bunch. No one has ever held a knit sale in our honour or gone on a sponsored walk to fund the tea and biscuits that are the lifeblood of the profession. But spare a thought for the poor blooming television previewers, for now is the summer of our discontent. Yup, the fitba is on. Then it will be the tennis and the Olympics, and day by day the cupboard empties of new programmes to recommend. Swathes have been cut out of the schedules, programmes pushed en masse to other channels. Who knows where anything is. This must be what it is like to be a River City fan.

Any former MPs who fear being out of work come early July should steer clear of The Traitors US (BBC3, Wednesday). Therein lies a cautionary tale about life on the outside of the Palace of Westminster. It’s chilly out there, people. Forget the stuff about treachery and loyalty and all that beeswax, who is that little fellow lurking among the raggle-taggle bunch of US reality TV “stars” making up the contestants in this game show? Why it is none other than John Bercow, former speaker of the House of Commons.

Did you see Nick Robinson giving Rishi Sunak the third degree the other evening? Will you be up for The Leader Interviews on STV on Wednesday night? It is the one the Prime Minister quit Normandy early to pre-record, so it has to be special. Wherever you turn at the moment there are interviews, usually “big” or “exclusive”, taking place. Anyone would think there was an election on. I have submitted just two bids for sit-downs, and I am hoping this selectivity, plus the fact each interview will consist of just one question, will increase my chances of a double yes.

A revealing scene played out after Mishal Husain brought the BBC’s seven-way election debate to a close last Friday. As is customary, the participants shook hands, relieved the combat was over for another night. Labour’s Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt of the Conservatives, who had been going at each other like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, were sharing a joke, pals again. It’s the Westminister way. Meanwhile, the more minor figures, a Plaid Cymru chap, your Green woman, the Lib Dem, were hovering awkwardly. From centre stage the SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, strode forth, offering handshakes all round.

We have grown used to climate change activists sitting down in the road to stop the traffic and make their point. Brave and necessary or foolhardy and a pain in the passenger seat? A new six-part documentary takes the viewer back to an earlier time in environmental protests and a different approach to getting the public’s attention. The question remains the same, though. Only this time there was an added factor to consider, one that goes by the name of Vladimir Putin. On Thin Ice – Putin v Greenpeace (BBC2, Sunday-Tuesday, 9pm/9.30pm) tells the story of the charity’s 2013 attempt to turn back the tide on oil and gas extraction in the Arctic Ocean. You may recall what happened. Even if you do, prepare to have the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention all over again.

In fact and in fiction, from Casualty to the latest ambulance reality series, the NHS is shown under strain if not in outright crisis. It is an accurate enough picture given many people’s experience, but it is not the one on show in The Hospital: Life on the Line (Channel 5, Monday). Filmed in the cardiology department at the NHS Golden Jubilee in Clydebank, this is the NHS of everyone’s dreams. Patients get treatment as soon as they need it in a hospital that’s clean, modern, and has lots of motivated staff on hand to aid patients’ speedy recovery. It’s a surgical Shangri-La, the likes of which we all hope is waiting for us when we need it.

You can never start the blame game too early in politics so let me come right out and name the guilty party: Fiona Bruce. That’s right. If it had not been for Fifi, or to be more precisely the bookers on BBC Question Time, giving Nigel Farage a wholly undeserved platform all these years, he would be just another old bore sitting in the corner of a pub in middle England. There he is, the regulars would say to any stranger who asked, good old Nigel. Likes a snifter, politics as whiffy as his Labradors, fond of telling anyone who will listen that “nothing in this country works any more”. As for that other business, you know, the foreigner stuff, well, he doesn’t mean any harm, not really.

As a new election week begins here is a sobering finding from the opinion polls commissioned since the day Rishi Sunak took a drenching on Downing Street. It was brought to viewers by Sir John Curtice in a new, “60 seconds with” slot on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. “Apart from Labour, up just half a point, the changes in support for all the parties average out at zero,” said the professor of politics at Strathclyde.

Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir (Sky Arts, free to air, Wednesday, 9pm) is back for a new series. Next week finds the Moirs in Cairngorms in search of the crested tit, described by Jim as “the punk rocker of the bird world” for its striking plume. Jim takes up the role of tour guide as the mountains come into view. “They were formed 40 million years ago,” he tells Nancy. “What, like you?” she replies.

Never let it be said the BBC doesn’t make the most of its talent. Once Auntie thinks you are hot property she will spread you around like butter on toast. Take the presenter of Clive Myrie’s Caribbean Adventure (BBC2, Monday-Wednesday, Friday). I was just about to start watching when a text came through announcing the corporation’s election night line-up. With no Huw Edwards around it will be Myrie and Laura Kuenssberg in charge on July 4. A new BBC king and queen are crowned.