If it ain't broke don't fix it, and writer Heidi Thomas obviously has no intention of tinkering with the Call the Midwife formula. Virtually nothing has changed, except that there's a new character, Sister Winifred, while Chummy (Miranda Hart) is now living with her husband PC Noakes (Ben Caplan) and has a baby son. However, you can't keep a born midwife down, and Chummy's return to the Nonnatus House mothership by the end of the episode was a foregone conclusion.

Well, that was a shock. I can’t remember seeing many crows around on the Caribbean island of Saint-Marie that is the location of Death in Paradise, but assuming there are some they should by now be appropriately stoned.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's fans recall with huge affection their previous collaborations – among them Big Night Out and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, two wonderfully anarchic shows. Now comes their first traditional, one-room (well two actually) sitcom House of Fools, which, true to form, is a mix of physical comedy, bawdy humour, surreal sight gags and utter nonsense.

A week ago the first episode of Benefits Street crashlanded on Channel 4. It visited the eponymous area of Birmingham where most residents are on some form of social security. Housing benefit, child benefit, disability benefit: you name it, they were in IDS's crosshairs. Channel 4’s regular payload of viewers shot off the chart: 4.3 million was higher than the ratings for any of its programmes last year. Many of them have apparently taken to visiting James Turner Street, where the luckless and mostly likeable stars live.

As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes.

If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience has warmed enough to the contestants to begin rooting for them or otherwise, but the prospect of will.i.am serenading the diminutive diva during the judges’ opening medley of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “I Predict a Riot” was reason enough to tune in to the third series of The Voice.

Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba, made by Israel's Channel 10, who sold the format to CBS before the original had even been completed.

Take two television formats and blend in mixer, then serve on one platter. The Taste is essentially Mastervoice, fusing Masterchef’s wannabe kitchen creatives and The Voice’s blind auditions. An early tasting suggests that the stand-out ingredient is Nigella Lawson in the court of public opinion.

There are times us northerners watch your typical London-set big-budget BBC drama and think, well, this really is another world. Whether it’s the two-hour commutes or the estate agencies where there is so much business that nobody has time to sit and watch cat videos on YouTube, there’s little about the world of The 7.39 familiar to those of us lacking three-bedroom semi-detached suburbia and a job in the City.

For a drama as committed to the exploration of the changing role of women in post-war Britain, The Bletchley Circle isn’t above a little sleight of hand. The second series of the critically acclaimed whodunnit began with a flashback to 1943 and to Alice Merren (Hattie Morahan), a bright young codebreaker who quickly solves a puzzle that the menfolk have been bamboozled by for the past two days.