Bad Behaviour is a decidedly solemn new Australian drama series with plenty to be solemn about. It was billed in Radio Times as ‘slow-burning’ – which feels a little tactless, given that the opening scene featured a girl in a boarding-school dormitory setting herself on fire (and burning quite quickly). We then cut to the same girl, Alice, ten years later looking surprisingly well as she gave a cello performance in a venue where the catering staff included a fellow ex-pupil called Jo, who greeted her warmly. Perhaps understandably, though, Alice was reluctant to reminisce about the old days at Silver Creek.

From there, the programme flashed back to the school on the day in 2012 when both arrived as scholarship girls for what the headmaster ironically assured them would be a year they’d never forget. Set in the remotest of Aussie wildernesses, Silver Creek prided itself on its character-building commitment to outdoor education and pupils’ independence. Unfortunately, what this meant in practice was an endless series of exhausting yomps and complete licence for the bullies to bully.

And bully they certainly did – although not in the traditional on-screen way, where mean girls are played for laughs and their comeuppance is guaranteed. Here, by contrast, the cruelty is unsparingly realistic and entirely unpunished.

Within days, the fearsome (and of course toothsome) Portia was leading her henchwomen in a relentless attack on everything Jo and Alice did: from liking each other to menstruating. For a while, in fact, it looked as if we were in for a straightforward, if undeniably wrenching tale of tormentors and their victims. Gradually, however, it was evident that things were becoming more complicated – and even more disturbing – than that. Jo made her hesitant way over to the dark side, seeking to impress Portia with some bullying of her own and leaving a bewildered Alice to twist in the breeze.

And just in case this wasn’t grim enough, the scenes in the present day made plain the lasting effects of Silver Creek on all concerned. Expanding on her unwillingness to meet for a catch-up, Alice told Jo that ‘of all the girls, you were the worst’. Among the audience for Alice’s recital was Portia, still comeuppance-free – and to Jo still as terrifying and beguiling as ever.

And with that, Jo went home to steal her housemate’s girlfriend, while still seeing herself as the tragic victim. Which, in this subtle, psychologically twisty drama, she sort of might be.

Such nuance was thin on the ground in another new drama series this week. The Lovers is one of those shows where you can’t help imagining what was said in the pitching meeting: in this case something along the lines of ‘It’s a rom-com where W1A meets Derry Girls – what’s not to like?’

Monday’s episode began with Seamus O’Hannigan (Johnny Flynn) waking up in his swanky London flat where the camera picked out photos of him with King Charles and Michelle Obama, before he showered in his swanky London bathroom, consulted his Twitter (or possibly X) feed, posted a selfie with his avocado and celery shake and was driven by a waiting car to his job as a political TV presenter.

Once he arrived, the good news was that he’d been given his own Sunday-morning show; the bad news, that it was to be recorded in Belfast. (‘It was either Belfast or Cardiff,’ explained his boss apologetically.) As it transpires, Seamus does have roots in the city – but no desire at all to get in touch with them.

Even so, amid a cunningly scene-setting blizzard of sectarian graffiti and marching bands, he delivered his first piece to camera, complete with much finger-wiggling whenever he mentioned the ‘Troubles’. He was then set upon by a gang of youths who appeared to find his approach somewhat patronising. Running away from them, he clambered over a backyard wall where a distinctly effortful meet-cute now took place.

That’s because on the other side of the wall was Janet (Roisin Gallagher), whom we’d already seen swearing a lot at the manager of the supermarket where she stacks shelves – but was here holding a shotgun to her face and about to pull the trigger. ‘You saved my life,’ panted Seamus. ‘You saved mine,’ Janet replied. ‘You prick.’

Naturally, when Seamus holed up in her house for the night, the two established that they had nothing whatsoever in common. Naturally, too, they found themselves strangely drawn to one another…

The Lovers, then, is the purest hokum: wildly implausible and sledgehammer-like in everything it does. And yet, thanks to the extremely likeable central performances, the high quotient of goodish jokes and, above all, the infectious sense of everybody involved having a blast, the answer so far to the question ‘what’s not to like?’ is a slightly sheepish ‘nothing really’.