Jesus weeps on geeky TV

Channel 4 masks a typical reality TV show as a 'social experiment', while RTÉ brings up the standard with some vintage Beckett

My 1975 Mini Collins Gem School Dictionary (I always was an extravagant spender) defines "geek" as a "boring unattractive person". I shall obviously have to splash out on a new edition because it must now apparently mean "intelligent, relatively attractive looking, educated male, capable of playing classical to a dumb but attentive audience". Or perhaps Channel 4 simply never splashed out on a Mini Collins Gem School Dictionary before they imported their latest reality television series, Beauty And the Geek (Friday, 10.40pm). The format of all reality shows is basically similar – get young, attractive people of the opposite sex together, throw in an outdoor hot tub, add a series of meaningless tasks, sit back and hope that the public tune in on the off-chance that at least one of them will eventually have sex with somebody else. Celebrity Big Brother recently gave us the spectacle of somebody having sex with himself, which is hardly the same thing, and TG4 recently let us spy on a set of strangers improving their Irish verbs, as opposed to their French kissing, which makes me suspect that the object of reality television rather bypassed them.

Beauty And the Geek allows attractive young women to improve their minds and display their bodies by twinning together couples chosen to represent the culture clash between real brains and fake boobs. The beauties may be familiar to anyone with a master's degree in podium dancers and page three models. One was recently crowned Miss Stockport. An original idea given to us Europeans by America – possibly in revenge for us giving them smallpox – the programme is naturally dressed up as a social experiment, with both types of contestants trying to learn to "improve their life skills".

It seems like an elaborate parody of a dozen other shows, with couples forced to leave the Scottish Castle where they are ensconced (a cross between an Agatha Christie novel and a Hammer Horror film) after a Weakest Link-style shoot-out where the beauties must answer scientific questions about what the geeks have taught them (like how to spell "coccyx") and the geeks must display what they have been taught about massage oils. I recall a time when Channel 4 was an innovative, challenging television station that made landmark films. It would be appropriate if, in the final questionnaire shootout, a beauty or a geek was asked to recite the shortest sentence in the bible: "Jesus wept."

Krapp is a figure who, on his 69th birthday, refuses to weep as he listens to a recording made on his 39th birthday, preferring to respond stoically to the barren emptiness of his continued existence by eating a succession of bananas. RTÉ's decision to rerun its Beckett season from some years ago gave us a chance to see again the brilliance of John Hurt as Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape as directed by Atom Egoyan (Thursday 12.20am), as a reminder – even at an insomniac's hour – of how intimate and brilliant a medium television can be. With so much dross in the world, it is a reminder of what an extraordinary achievement this series of films was, with Michael Colgan bringing together talents as diverse as Hurt and the director Charles Sturridge.

Beckett is among the recent topics covered by Capital D (RTÉ 1, Thursday, 7pm), which is a sort of Nationwide for the sprawling nation of Dublin. Well presented by Anne Cassin, its highly electric brief extends from sex shops in Capel Street to the faded grandeur of Henrietta Street. Rather like a good wine, however, you always feel that a programme like this only really comes into its own in retrospective after being buried away in vaults for a few decades, like the series about Shay Healy wandering around old Dublin villages that was recently re-broadcast after 20 years, and which left the viewer gaping in wonder at the changes to Dublin's landscape. No doubt viewers will do likewise with Capital D in 20 years time, when even the handcuffs displayed in shop windows in Capel Street will look quaint.