BBC1 had a successful run recently with Welsh drama, Keeping Faith, a story of what looked to be the perfect family, only to reveal that perfect lives are never what they seem; particularly when the husband is a drug-dealing philanderer with the backbone of a pond snail.

Then we had the hit Australian drama The Secret She Keeps, featuring two women with very different backgrounds and their own secret lives.

It seemed only a matter of time before a TV writer came up with a drama set in Australia, which incorporated sunshine lives, lashings of marital treachery and betrayal by the person you’d suspect least.

Charlie Brooks, who starred as Janine in Eastenders, now stars as Anna in Lie With Me (C5, 9pm), the career-starved wife of Australian lawyer, Jake. We learn the couple have relocated to Melbourne with their two children and so the family moved into a big house with a big kitchen island.

Yet, soon we learned that Jake, who claims to love his wife “very, very much,” is in himself an island, untouched and unspoilt by basic human traits such as honesty and compassion. So far, so bad. But then we discovered that Anna has mental health issues. She had a break down back in Blighty, precipitated perhaps by the discover that her “gorgeous” hubby (former Neighbours star Brett Tucker) had had an affair.

But now? Has the sharp-suited, classic car-driving Jake cooled his over-heated jets?

To add to the plot mix, the couple hire a nanny, to allow Anna to return to work as a designer. But is this nanny as Mary Poppins-cute as she seems? It was all laid before us yet, as obvious as a kangaroo in a new kitchen. Did we really need an opening scene in which Anna walks along her driveway only to encounter a slithering snake, the metaphor for the deception to come.

Yes, Charlie Brooks can act, and the nanny, played by Phoebe Roberts, certainly offered a neat hint of Poppins – only to slide effortlessly into someone more likely to have an umbrella with a poisoned tip.

But we were continually slapped in the face with exposition. At one point, Anna looks in the mirror and says, “I am not my past.” Nor is she the future of TV drama, to judge by this effort. And Jake was revealed to be too bad too quickly. Why relocate his family all the way to Melbourne simply to gaslight her?

However, what was especially hard to stomach was Jake’s stomach. The director seemed determined for the hunky husband to take his shirt off at every available opportunity, revealing a Poldarkian six pack.

Gratuitous. You bet. But then this unoriginal series wasn’t contrived to be original and inventive. It’s a post-European Championship/post Wimbledon soft drama that doesn’t require too much brain usage. Just don’t think too hard or you’ll work out the entire storyline.

There wasn’t much about Ernest Hemingway, (BBC4 9pm, Tuesday) that wasn’t original. The writer has proved to be a captivating individual, a man full of manliness, paradoxes –and rampant insecurities.

This week’s episode saw the celebrated writer living in Florida and it attempted an understanding of why all his pursuits, such as hunting, boxing, fishing, drinking – and watching bullfighting – seemed to matter to him so much.

Writer Edna O’Brien reckoned it emerged from a ‘deep-seated sense of loneliness and depression.’

Tobias Wolf, however, was puzzled as to why Hemingway took such great delight in killing, and loved to be photographed standing next to dead rhinos or marlin.

There is little doubt that Hemingway, who took his own life after undergoing yet another electric shock treatment for depression, had a fascination with death.

Perhaps it was because for so much of his life he knocked continuously on Heaven’s door. Hemingway survived anthrax, malaria, pneumonia, dysentery, skin cancer, hepatitis, diabetes, two plane crashes, a ruptured kidney, a spleen and liver and a fractured skull. And the odd bad crit. It seems however that the only thing that could kill Hemingway was Hemingway himself. Was his connection to dead things his way of establishing due process?

The Two Ronnies, Lost Tapes, STV 9pm, Wednesday.It’s always nice to be reminded of the chemistry the two Ronnies had, although we didn’t get much by the way of revelation in this programme.

What we got was celebrity fans offering their recollections about the bigger Ronnie, in between newly released clips from the Corbett family’s home movies.

But that’s not to say the same night didn’t offer modern comedy depth, as served up by Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan in This way Up, (C4, 10pm).

The first series convinced me that this is a great comedic relationship between two Irish sisters that owes much to truth and honesty. There’s nothing that’s Irving Berlin-Sisters cosy about the relationship between these two caring, yet ever-bickering, siblings.

The sarky fun and coal-black comedy continued, as teacher Aine (Bea) recovers from her mental health issues and Shona (Horgan) does her best to support, but in a detached, realistic sense. “Are you all right? You’ve been talking about cutting your fringe?” “I’m fine. Shut up.”