LAST weekend, the BBC not only broadcast the news: it was the news. Bulletin after bulletin featured as the main story its spat with Gary Lineker, raking over every aspect of the débâcle. Mr Lineker’s suspension for posting a tweet condemning the Government’s new immigration policy engulfed the schedule. Channelling “I am Spartacus,” his fellow presenters of Match of the Day (BBC1, Saturday) walked out in solidarity: if he wasn’t allowed to front the programme, neither would they.

You may have guessed that highlights of football matches are not my favourite viewing, but even I could see that the truncated broadcast that resulted, without any word of explanation about what was going on, was a farcical waste of resources. The issues are many and important. How impartial must the BBC’s star presenters be? Is the BBC in thrall to right-wing government forces? How much is it hobbled by fear that many Conservatives would like to end the licence fee altogether?

And, of course, it raises the philosophical question what impartiality is, exactly: any supposed pursuit of even-handedness which results in Nigel Farage’s being given air time to spout his extremism needs to be challenged. But devoting quite so much time to examining the problem felt more like extreme navel-gazing. Thank heaven that no Church would ever devote its energies to agonising over internal affairs rather than to proclaiming the gospel.

Sex on Screen: Storyville (BBC4, 28 February) was the opposite of titillating, dampening any potential erotic frisson as effectively as the commination service. It was about cinema, not TV. Hollywood in the 1920s and ’30s portrayed many strong, powerful, and sexy women, but the 1934 Hays Code imposed strict censorship. The hypocrisy was that the innocent and wholesome films were riddled with sexual exploitation. Women who refused their bosses could expect no roles. Even the sexual revolution of the 1960s masked gross inequality. As stars such as Jane Fonda attested, the supposedly consensual images on screen hid directors’ duplicity, tricking women into exposing more, or engaging in scenes far more explicit, than they had been promised.

The distress as women recounted, often for the first time, these situations from decades ago was deeply affecting. Today’s intimacy coaches ensure far more consent during sex scenes, but underline the artificiality of the medium. What we watch might be exciting and alluring — but it’s a fake.

Paris Police 1905 (BBC4 from Saturday) features religion threaded through its themes of innocence, guilt, betrayal, and brutality. It’s hugely stylish, as crepuscular scenes of squalor contrast with the glamour of the belle époque. Bourgeois morality is threatened by homosexuality and syphilis — but here such morality is an ineffectual lid, failing to hide the rot within.