I’M choosing a Piers Morgan show as my highlight of the week and, believe me, I’m as surprised as you are.

I first learned about Morgan by reading Private Eye where he was always referred to as Piers “Morgan” Moron and so, before I knew anything about this man, I knew he was considered trashy. When he left newspapers and began to work as a TV personality that trashy image was reinforced by his celebrity interviews and involvement on Britain’s Got Talent.

He’s now presenting a new two-part series for ITV called Killer Women With Piers Morgan (STV, Wednesday).

With such a gaudy title I didn’t expect much from the documentary, particularly as it was being shown alongside the new Louis Theroux programmes. Louis can show every other interviewer how it’s done by being gentle, by standing back and effacing himself so that the subjects might come forward in his place. How would the boisterous Piers “Morgan” Moron compare?

Perhaps he’d been watching Louis Theroux and taking some hurried notes because the show did begin with a muted, gentle tone. There was no garish sensationalism which was what I’d expected. Instead, it started with a hymn. A young, shy prisoner was coaxed by Morgan into singing Amazing Grace. She twisted her hands and seemed uncomfortable yet was too polite to refuse and so she sang. The bare prison room where Morgan was interviewing her was suddenly filled with her trembling voice. No-one had expected this, not from a high-security prisoner or from Piers Morgan. Hymns and modesty and quiet awkwardness? I was surprised.

The nervous girl was Erin Gaffey. Aged 16, and with accomplices, she “annihilated” her family with guns, fire and a scimitar sword. Her father survived but her mother and two brothers were killed.

Now she’s 24 and is sitting in an East Texas jail, a tiny girl with long flowing blonde hair, dressed in white, singing hymns to Piers Morgan. The show didn’t opened with sensationalism – or did it? Instead of beginning with shots of the crime scene, or with gruesome details of decapitations and burned bodies, it opened with serenity and song – but wasn’t this just a hidden kind of sensationalism: lull the audience with hymns, eke out some sympathy for the little girl in white, so that the horror, when it does come, hits harder?

Morgan was keen to underline the difference between the murderer of a few years ago and the girl singing in front of him. “Can you believe that person was you?” he asks her. A skilled interviewer would never ask such a question: instead, they’d ponder how one single personality can accommodate such gentility and such violence.

That was the main flaw in this show. Piers Morgan couldn’t accept – or didn’t want his viewers to accept – that Erin Gaffey was capable of both murder and “amazing grace”. We either saw her as a murderer or as a strangely angelic prisoner. There was no middle-ground, only the extremes of femininity, ricocheting from hysterical violence to gentle songs and smiles.

Society’s attitude to female murderers has long been this way. Ruth Ellis was a cheap, lipsticked glamour girl, corrupted by her sleazy lifestyle; Myra Hindley was a bleached-haired demon, in thrall to her sick lover; Rosemary West an insatiable prostitute and pervert … and so it goes on, leaving absolutely no room for subtlety.

But the fact that the show provoked us to consider this dichotomy in the character of one person means it did have some power. Whether deliberately or not, it surely made the audience think, and wonder what is behind the masks of demon and angel, which society so quickly places on its infamous women.

The new series of Very British Problems (C4, Monday) began this week but seems to have lost its purpose. The show began life as a very witty, observant Twitter account which would blurt out panicked and appalled little tweets about the difficulties of being a repressed British person who’s trying frantically to avoid embarrassment in a world full of boors and idiots.

The humour lay in not knowing who was sending the tweets and so we could imagine it was an uptight Englishman in a suit and bowler hat, catching the 8.09 to Waterloo, perhaps resembling a stern-faced John Cleese. Or maybe it’s a kindly old lady who makes jam for the Women’s Institute and crochets bootees for the church jumble sale, and is quietly horrified at the manners of today’s young people. We could imagine what we liked, or slot ourselves into the situations described. But transferring the concept from Twitter to TV has ruined that. Our imaginary and oh-so-typical Brit has been replaced by celebrities. James Corden, Catherine Tate and David Tennant now share their awkward moments and social embarrassments, and there is no longer room for us. We’ve become observers not awkward, agonised participants.

We all love Christmas but wouldn’t like it every day – contrary to what the song says. The luxury of all that food, wine and excitement would soon wear off and leave us longing for an uneventful day at work or a quiet potter around the supermarket. We can only take so much wonder and joy – and that must be the reason why Charlie Brooker is relatively rare on TV.

If I was in charge, he’d be on TV constantly. BBC News 24 would be Brooker 24 and watching would be mandatory. But, as with too much turkey and Prosecco, maybe we’d soon start to groan and wilt: no more, please. I’m full! I can’t take another joke. I’m woozy with these witty observations. Another gag will make me gag.

His brilliance is just too much for us ordinary people and so, wisely, Brooker is rationed. His Screenwipe series comes but once a year, and shows like Cunk on Shakespeare (BBC2, Wednesday) are spectacular one-offs. This programme was commissioned as part of the TV tributes for Shakespeare’s birthday but, unlike the others, you needed no prior knowledge of the playwright to enjoy it.

In fact, a slight bewilderment at his language, or some tortured memories of being force-fed Shakespeare at school, would actually be of use because then you’d be in perfect harmony with Philomena Cunk as she tries to understand just what all the fuss is about.

On the surface this was a cheeky, disrespectful look at Shakespeare but, of course, the joke is on dullards who refuse to appreciate him, and also on those who faint and fawn at his genius without questioning a single thing.