LIKE prospectors and detectorists, documentary makers dream of striking gold, that one character who captures the public’s attention. Louis Theroux found his in Joe Exotic, as featured in 2011’s America’s Most Dangerous Pets, only for Netflix to come along a decade later and take the character global with Tiger King. Everyone forgot Theroux got there first.

Makers of The Warship: Tour of Duty (BBC2, Sunday) must have fancied they had found the real deal in young chef Ronnie Lambert. Likable Essex boy Ronnie had a way with words, calling a fellow seaman who liked his kip “half man, half mattress”.

Ronnie is the life and soul of the Navy kind of guy, said his boss, with a great future ahead of him. But with a past that included drugs and a string of crummy jobs, the 29-year-old father of two had not always made the right choices.

There were other characters, including admin staffer Helayna Birkett who said she “didn’t agree” with war, and the awfully posh-sounding Sub Lieutenant John Hawke, but Ronnie was the filmmakers’ guy.

The first of this six-part series was lucky to have him. The rest of the hour was a fairly dull affair, despite the waves of oo-er stats. HMS Queen Elizabeth is the Royal Navy’s biggest-ever warship; it cost £3.5 billion to build; houses 1600 men and women, and so on. Impressive, but all this pinko liberal viewer could think was “that’s a lot of hip ops”.

Plus, much of the life on board fare would have been familiar to viewers of Channel 5’s Warship: Life at Sea. Now the Russians have made an appearance things should start to liven up.

Everyone Else Burns (Channel 4, Monday), being a new sitcom, had its own first episode hill to climb. Simon Bird, late of the Inbetweeners, played the dad in a family of fundamentalist Christians praying for the end of times so they could be saved and the sinners sent to the fiery pit.

It could have been a misfire, a sort of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit with one-liners. But the characters worked, even if Bird’s pompous dad was hardly a leap from his previous roles, and the gags kept coming, which always helps. Even better, Morgana Robinson (Stuck, The Windsors) turned up as the family’s neighbour. You just know she’s going to be trouble.

Remember last year’s The Holiday, a tasty, trust no-one drama about a group of apparent pals abroad? Mutual suspicion also ran rampant in The Catch (Channel 5, Wednesday), written and adapted by the same team of T M Logan (novel) and Michael Crompton.

Jason Watkins (so you knew from the off it was going to be an, er, catch) played kindly but under pressure fisherman Ed, whose daughter had brought home her new boyfriend, Ryan (Aneurin Barnard).

There was something about young Ryan, with his money and his big talk of the Army (Ed’s a Navy man, natch) that Ed just didn’t take to. Maybe he saw him play a right swine of a boss in BBC1's The Pact.

Set in the south west of England, Catch boasted enough red herrings to choke a whale. The small seaside town had a red light zone to rival Amsterdam’s, and one episode (of four) in, the misunderstandings are already becoming bizarre. Happily, there are enough acting chops in the cast to keep things watchable.

Grayson Perry's Full English (Channel 4, Thursday) looked at that shy, retiring part of the UK that hardly gets a look-in because of its grasping, noisy neighbors. You know their type: always round asking for a cup of sugar or a few extra billions.

Fair play to Perry, who was out to pin down what it means to be English. If the rest of the UK can indulge in navel-gazing, why not England?

His first stop, in Dover, did not bode well with an interviewee who feared “something terrible” was going to happen if the small boats kept coming.

You feared for Perry when he went to Munich for a match between Engerrland and Germany, but the thoughtful, well-travelled fans he met were the surprise of the night.

After a stop in the village of Bicknacre, Essex, where he grew up, it was on to visit some druids. This time he dressed as a deer to take part in a celebration of nature. Adding his usual light touch (“Beware of us in the night when you are driving”), he finished the episode feeling slightly more on the trail of Englishness. Which could all change again when he arrives in the Midlands.

I was wrong about the new season of Bad Education (BBC3, Sunday/iPlayer). After an iffy start the boys and girls of Abbey Grove are back to their ridiculous best. This week one pupil said to his trying to be down with the kids teacher: “There are Little Britain sketches that have aged better than you.”