If the family that prays together stays together, what does the family that takes part in TV programmes do? Seek counselling?

Television doesn’t always play nice with the people who pay its wages. Sure it gives them money and prizes on game shows, but it also puts them through the wringer in reality programmes.

My Mum, Your Dad (ITV1, Monday-Friday) is obviously out to change that. The dating show for fortysomethings upwards has been punted as “Love Island with Love Handles”. Feel free to make up your own title. Take Me Out with Varicose Veins? Fully Clothed Attraction?

The idea is that a group of single parents mingle on a two week “retreat” while their adult children observe on CCTV.

Sounds awful, so every effort has been made to inject loveliness into proceedings. Lovely big house, lovely kids, lovely Davina McCall hosting, lovely poptastic soundtrack. So don’t call it Big Brother with Bunions, right?

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon on Loose Women

Among the contestants were a Scots mum and daughter, Karli and Caroline. In a cute reversal of roles, Karli and the other kids dropped the parents off as if it was the first day of school, which in a way it was. Some haven’t dated in years, one lost his wife just a year ago. By the end of the first episode everyone was having a lovely time.  Could it last?

Call me Cynical Cathy, but I’m reserving judgment till we are a bit further on. Come the second day the producers were already shaking things up by introducing “surprise” additions to the group. There has been a lot of focus on the widower finding everything too much too soon. Who could have predicted that? Er, everyone?

I also wonder how the (understandably protective) kids are going to react if it looks like their parent is not “winning” the game. As for the constant yakking about lurve and relationships, do stick a cork in it.

More family ties were put under strain in Celebrity Race Around the World (BBC1, Wednesday), which was exactly like the usual version but with people who seemed vaguely familiar. Who am I kidding: the only one I recognised was the woman from All Saints.

There is no better way to get to know someone than to travel cheaply with them. The cheap thing is important. Money smoothes out the bumps. Sure enough, personalities began to show themselves, adults became kids again or took over the parenting role. No one got ratty, alas, which made the hour seem as long as the trek from Africa to the Arctic they are setting out on, but give it time.

For more TV reviews subscribe here

They know how to travel in The Morning Show (Apple TV+, Wednesday). When top UBA news journos like Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) decide to leave their New York studio and hit the road, only a private jet will do (Herald editor please note).

Having made it through a sexual harassment scandal and Covid, the channel now finds itself the potential plaything of weirdo media mogul Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), and the victim of cyber attackers threatening to spill staff secrets. Aye, it’s just like STV.

The Morning Show is as daft as Dynasty with twice the hair, but its excess is the secret of its success. Aniston and fellow big noise Reese Witherspoon are in charge and relishing it. The rest of us are along for the wildly enjoyable ride.

Two seasons in, it is time for a second wave of characters to emerge. Among the most interesting of these is icy cool young gun exec Stella Bak (Greta Lee). Don’t worry, Billy Crudup, playing fellow boss Cory Ellison, is still wolfing down the scenery.

A documentary star was born in Junior Doctors: Life on the Wards (BBC Scotland, Wednesday), filmed at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Bilal, just 25, works long hours in a stressful environment, but you don’t see him asking for a lift home in a private jet. Even when he is trying and failing to find a vein in a patient to take blood, he’s still cheery (the patient not so much). “There is still a little child in every surgeon and doctor going ‘Wow, this is so cool,” said Bilal. Give that kid another pay rise.

Coco Chanel is having a moment in the meeja, something to do with a new V&A exhibition opening this week. The documentary Coco Channel Unbuttoned (BBC2, Friday) stood out from the crowd for its comprehensiveness and the quality of its talking heads. Some of these women were almost as chic as Madame herself.

I found myself more interested in them than in yet another canter through the Chanel legend.

But off we trotted again, trying to separate fact from the many fictions spun by the woman herself. As one of the talking heads put it, Chanel usually exists at the extremes, either a feminist heroine or a Nazi spy. I can’t say this film solved the puzzle of who she was, but it looked gorgeous, which to Chanel would be the main thing.