HELP me out please on a question of etiquette. On viewing the new Sir David Attenborough series Wild Isles (BBC1, Sunday), should one salute or curtsy at the beginning, the end, or at regular intervals throughout? Sir David is after all the closest thing to television royalty we have.

Set in the British Isles, the programme arrived with an added complication after it was dragged into the Gary Lineker tweets row. According to talk in the media steamie, one episode had been pulled because it was critical of government policy on the environment. Not so, said the BBC, the programme in question was always meant to be shown only on iPlayer.

Auntie eventually caved on Lineker, the Attenborough row rumbles on, and soon Tory MPs will be praising Wild Isles to the skies as the best of British. If animals made documentaries about humans think of the laughs they would have.

Skinner and Mina's Literary Road Trip (free to view Sky Arts, Tuesday) found the comedian and the crime writer back in a hired car, this time to explore the friendship of Pope and Swift. Previous series have looked at Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Boswell and Johnson.

The Herald: Paula Malcomson as DI Colette Cunningham in RedemptionPaula Malcomson as DI Colette Cunningham in Redemption (Image: free)

By now Skinner and Mina are like an old married couple. Imagine Bob Hope and Bing Crosby if they had degrees, lived in east London, sported Doc Martens and, in Mina’s case, Mulberry handbags. Groovier still was her bright green fun fur jacket that was only a shade down from Orville’s.

The subject being satire there was the obligatory visit to Ian Hislop at Private Eye, snore, and here and there other faces popped up. Mostly, though, Skinner and Mina were enough for each other, going off to do their homework and reunite in various establishments – usually pubs – to discuss what they had discovered.

Their enthusiasm is genuine and infectious, a treat to behold. Just one small criticism though, and I’m afraid it is directed at you, Frank. You’re one of the family now, so we say this with love. In the words of that other literary duo, Chas & Dave, you’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s. Any chance you could give it a rest?

A little less of him and a lot more of Mina would make the show perfect. It would be irony indeed if a programme that makes a point of criticising women’s invisibility in the literary scenes of the day was to commit the same error.

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Friday 9pm is a funny old slot. Who would dare go up against the mighty Gogglebox (happy 10th anniversary btw)? Redemption (STV, Friday), that’s who. The story of a woman detective looking into her own family’s past, it’s an unassuming but promising vehicle for the talents of Paula Malcolmson, playing DI Colette Cunningham.

DI Cunningham is busy chasing scallies in Liverpool when she gets a call about her estranged daughter from a Dublin detective. A few scenes later she is off on a ferry to Ireland and has transferred to the Garda before you can say, “Is that a thing, then?”

Arriving in Dublin, her new boss turns out to be Siobhan McSweeney, or Sister George Michael as was from Derry Girls. It’s a slow start but the set-up is promising and Dublin is always worth a visit, so I’ll be back.

The Piano: The Final (Channel 4, Wednesday) exceeded expectations. We knew there was likely to be a moistness in the eye area as the four young amateur musicians appeared in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

This, though, was something else. “I can’t cry with this much eyeliner on,” said host Claudia Winkleman at one point. But it was touch and go for a while as to whether the dam would burst and Claudia would join everybody else in having a good old bubble.

The Piano was terrific television. Of course it was designed to provoke a reaction, but any cynicism you might have had at the beginning soon went the way of my mascara. The kids were not just all right musicians, they were a genuinely talented bunch and pretty fine human beings too.

I’ve asked Channel 4 if there will be another series. It might be tricky. The special sauce in the programme was the secret judges, Lang Lang and Mika, their presence only revealed to the musicians at the end of each episode. The rabbit is out the hat now.

To have the judges out in the open would make The Piano seem like Britain’s Got Talent or that other end of the pier/end of civilisation show. That would never do.

I’m much enjoying Brit Pop: the Music That Changed Britain (Channel 5, Sunday), largely because of the tunes but occasionally for the talking heads. Broadcaster Mark Radcliffe on the divine Jarvis Cocker: “He’s sort of the missing link between Mick Jagger and Alan Bennett.”