STEVEN Knight’s SAS Rogue Heroes (BBC1, Sunday) teetered on the edge of believability, defying us to consider whether his comic-book sensibility could ever be taken seriously as a horrors-of-war drama. Could ultra-cool guys wearing Aviators and khaki chic really be considered killing machines?

By Episode Four however, there was a hope that the silliness would shift up a gear, that the mythologising about the creation of this elite fighting squad would give way to something a little more serious. But no.

The entire point of this series is to re-tell tales of derring-do. And we saw again how the SAS lads mounted their campaigns against Nazi airfields loaded up with bravado and home-made bombs.

But again, we were denied any real moments of the internal conflict that must have, if not raged, in the heads in the desert force, certainly emerged at times.

This episode did feature the death of a central figure but because of the focus on bravado/idiocy/nihilism we didn’t feel the loss.

Because the fearsome fighters hadn’t been crafted with near enough character and internal concerns, we didn’t really care about their fate.

Teasing indicators of repressed homosexuality, bullying in past lives, cold and distant parents and covert transvestitism were all suggested as possible triggers for descent into disturbance and even psychopathy. But because they were presented as thinly as the pages of aphoristic dialogue, yet again it all seemed rather too slight. The heroes were just too dammed heroic.

Football, as we know, is all about heroes and villains, and we work out – usually – which is which by the result of the match and the individual performances.

The World Cup, Opening Ceremony, (BBC1 and ITV, Sunday) however offered up a very different interpretation of good guys and duds – before a ball was even kicked.

This year, the heroes were those who battled injustice, such as presenter Alex Scott, who wore the OneLove armband. They were the advertisers who refused to back the regime in Qatar with sponsorship. And an ace striker appeared in the form of comedian Joe Lycett, prepared to burn 10k to highlight his anger at David Beckham’s role as an ambassador for the event. And Gary Lineker, who used his huge social media account to highlight the human rights record of the host.

The villains? FIFA of course, with accusations of historical corruption flying around like yellow cards at an Ayrshire Scottish Junior Cup derby. And Robbie Williams’s conscience seems to be as removed as the tight shorts he wore back in the early days of Take That. Piers Morgan is once again on the boo-list for attacking the BBC, who along with ITV didn’t show the opening ceremony.

Yet, in a sense the World Cup in Qatar opening, sparse terracing and all, has been a success. Perhaps we’ll never have a World Cup again in a state in which a reported 6,500 South Asian migrant workers will die in the building of stadia.

But what did we learn of the modern-day persecution of Jews in Britain and across Europe? David Baddiel: Jews Don’t Count (Channel Four, Monday) was an intriguing documentary.

There is little doubt that anti-Semitic acts across Europe and in the US have soared in recent times, and as such any investigation into why this is the case is entirely valid.

Baddiel, the high-profile comedian and presenter, laid out his thesis from the start; Jews simply don’t count. While legislation and focused concerns for minority and ethnic rights has never been stronger, particularly in the UK, somehow Jews are not considered to be a minority.

Modern identity politics means no group should be left out. But the Jews are.

Yet, why do the historical stereotypes remain, the idea of Jews being money-crazed power brokers of commerce, the dark forces behind government?

Baddiel featured prominent Jewish figures such as Rachel Riley, Stephen Fry, playwright Patrick Marber, Miriam Margolyes and David Schwimmer to add weight to the undeniable argument.

But what we didn’t come away with was a real understanding of why the prejudice, the vilification does not seem to be dissipating. Why do we take the knee in football, support the #MeToo movement – yet we don’t protest at the treatment of Britain’s Jews?

That brings into question what it means to be Jewish. Is it a cultural definition? A religion? Are Jews defined by race? Whoopi Goldberg argues the Holocaust wasn’t about race. David Schwimmer, however, said: “I’ve never felt white.”

Meanwhile, Baddiel said he wasn’t religious, and felt no connection to Israel, while Miriam Margolyes believes of anti-Semitism that “Israel is at the heart of it all”.

It’s easy to agree with Baddiel’s argument that Jews don’t count. But perhaps to offer more of a grasp of what being Jewish is would help understand – and tackle – the thinking behind the evil that is anti-Semitism.