The job involved hiding in the bushes, camping out for days wondering if you were ever going to get a sniff of the subject. It was like photographing wildlife, says one of the doughty, only the “quarry” was JD Salinger, a reclusive writer of a cult novel that spoke to millions and continues to do so to this day.

Director Shane Salerno had his own Herculean task when making the documentary Salinger (Sky Arts, Tuesday, 9pm). Yet from a mountain of interviews with the author’s friends, acquaintances and biographers, plus acres of footage and other material, some of it previously unseen, he manages to assemble a compelling portrait of a man who famously did not want to be known.

Some of the sharpest observations come from those who knew Salinger in the days before The Catcher in the Rye, when he was just another struggling writer being rejected by The New Yorker magazine. Except he wasn’t struggling. Salinger lived with his parents in a Park Avenue apartment. He had been to all the best schools and been kicked out of them, much like his anti-hero, Holden Caulfield. The part about being rejected by The New Yorker was true, though he was hardly alone in that.

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He finally had a short story about Holden accepted, but the Second World War saw it shelved. Salinger fought in Europe, continuing to work on Catcher whenever he could. Legend has it he had pages on him when he landed on the beaches of Normandy.

War made Salinger the writer he became, but it broke him too. What he had seen in combat, and the camps, led to a breakdown, a fate some of his best-known characters would share.

Catcher eventually made its debut in 1951 and would go on to sell in the tens of millions. One teenager’s cry of anguish against phoneys was heard around the world and it still sells in six figures to this day.

Other writers would make the most of the adulation that followed, but not Salinger. He took himself to a cabin in the woods of New Hampshire, never to be seen or heard from again. Or so went the legend. As Salerno shows, he did engage with the outside world when he wanted. At this point the documentary takes a turn for the bleak. Salinger may have been a hero on the page, but in reality he was a flawed individual who allowed nothing to interfere with his work.

Salerno’s documentary comes in a movie-length two hours and 40 minutes. Slick editing makes it rattle along but at times it looks its age. The real pity is that it was released in 2013 and more has happened since in the Salinger story. The essentials are here though, making this a must-see for anyone who will forever hold a torch for Holden.

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It has been 16 years, can you believe, since Mad Men shimmied on to television to sell viewers an initially seductive view of the advertising industry. The male Madison Avenue execs had a high old time of it, but what of the women, the Peggy Olsens stuck in the typing pool?

Some of Peggy’s British counterparts are interviewed in Mad Women (Channel 4, Tuesday, 10pm). When they started their careers, women were portrayed in advertising in two ways - they were either obsessed with keeping a clean house, or getting and keeping a man. The idea of women making ads that went beyond sexist stereotypes was just too far out to be believable.

Then along came a certain jeans ad set in a launderette and started a mini-revolution. Barbara Nokes got the idea for the Levi 501 ad from her own life. She really was sitting in a launderette one evening when a man came in, stripped to his underwear, and bundled his clothes into a machine. In the ad, the guy became Nick Kamen, the soundtrack was Marvin Gaye, and the rest was … well, you know the punchline.

We also meet the female execs behind boundary-pushing ads for Flake, Diet Coke, Lynx, Dove and other brands. Although you have to remind yourself at times that they are talking about selling stuff and not saving the world, the women here undoubtedly changed the industry and helped change the culture along the way.

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It has been so long since the chaps of Queer Eye (Netflix) were around I had begun to think they had gone their separate ways. Never fear: the original, and some would say still the best, of the life makeover programmes, Queer Eye is back for a seventh series. It’s still the same “Fab Five” line-up giving advice on interior design, fashion, grooming, and so on - but the location has moved from Texas to New Orleans, a city still haunted by the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Queer Eye can sometimes be cheesier than the world’s biggest toastie, but the hearts of all concerned are in the right place. Their dancing is pretty dang fine too.