O buddha, where art thou now?

Sunday’s opening episode felt like the setup for a cliché-ridden heist movie, wherein an ageing mastermind reassembles the old gang to pull off one last job. This year’s participants are an entirely new bunch yet they adhere to established archetypes: old dears and young fogies, homebirds and fusspots. Brennan is especially popular among police and priests — fellow crusaders in the unending battle against disorder — so it’s no surprise to find Garda Brian and Fr Richard in the travelling party. Brennanism is very much an authoritarian faith.

VECTOR THAT FOXVECTOR THAT FOX

Sixty years separates the oldest follower from the youngest, yet the appearance of diversity is deceptive. This is a homogeneous group, bound by a common zeal. In Brennan’s presence, they all become swooning teenyboppers. Sophie, a 22-year-old marketing student who claims to be his biggest fan, all but lost her bearings when she met him at the airport. “I knew it was Thailand, I knew it!” she whooped, when informed that the destination was Vietnam.

Like previous grand tours, the latest series suffers from disorienting lurches in tone, as the producers seem unsure whether to laugh with the Brennanites or at them. Colm O’Regan, a comedian of considerable talent, returns as narrator. Apart from frail quips about Brennan’s attire, however, O’Regan has little to work with. He spends most of the show parroting what sounds like tourist brochure bumf.

Mind you, some scene-setting is necessary because Brennan has all but given up on the pretence that he’s making a travel programme. His efforts at tour guidance are brazenly slipshod. Barrelling through Hanoi in a bicycle taxi, he burbled about the history of pagodas but the patter soon petered out. “I haven’t a clue, I’m only making it up,” he giggled.

Instead we get a superabundance of the theatrical whinnying and ditsy-dotty scolding that are Brennan’s TV trademarks. “Stop that jigging, Richard,” he admonished the padre as the group queued at Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. “He’s all jiggy-jiggy today.” Brennan’s subsequent insistence that this wasn’t the time or place for laughter fell on deaf ears among his giddy acolytes but, for most viewers, he was merely stating the painfully obvious.

Misery tourism was also the main selling point of The Week the Landlords Moved in, a documentary series in which wealthy property owners spend seven days inhabiting the lives and living quarters of their tenants. The format recalls the early days of reality TV before social experiments gave way to public freak shows.

Beneath the jaunty facade, there is worthwhile purpose to this exercise, as we’re shown the myriad ways in which a house or flat that can be a goldmine for its owner can simultaneously be a poverty trap for its tenant. Multiple occupation has destroyed the fabric of many properties; safety concerns are routinely ignored; and neglect of minor repairs, often by agents employed by landlords, frequently results in ruinous dilapidation.

The squalor on display was eye-opening, with many of the featured properties infested by mould, damp and sometimes rats. Several of the property owners came across as blots on the landscape, their egos as swollen as their bank balances. Having bragged loudly about their resourcefulness and self-reliance, the landlords almost invariably crumbled when required to feed, heat and entertain themselves on the tenant’s weekly budget.

Britain’s housing crisis is almost as acute as our own, and an Irish adaptation of this show is almost inevitable. But would-be sub-leasers should beware: the format is beset by structural weaknesses. Each edition culminates with an inordinately neat “moment of clarity” in which a usually tearful landlord pledges to mend their ways as well as all the broken utilities. The hugging and refurbs provide feelgood endings but reduce this otherwise serious endeavour to the lowly status of makeover TV.

How to Retire at 40 was billed as the definitive guide to quitting the rat race while you’re still young enough to pursue more enjoyable sports. Insider secrets were promised, but not delivered. “Supersaving” was identified as the most reliable method of rapid nest-egg enlargement.

Barney, a former accountant who retired at 43, says most workers could do the same if they saved 75% of their salary for seven years.

As the documentary demonstrated, however, penny-pinching at this rate can be soul-destroying. Books and seminars for those who aspire to early retirement are now big business, but the people who seem to be getting rich quickest from the trend are the authors and motivational speakers.

Retirement is neither an option nor an ambition for Christy Dignam, the hard-headed, tough-minded Aslan frontman who has continued performing while battling cancer. This is Christy could have been a mawkish valediction but, thanks to smart choices by the producer and director David Power, the film turned out to be something more sophisticated and defiant: a combination of insightful rock doc and stirring salute to human resilience. Dignam and his bandmates spoke with candour and self-deprecation about their screw-ups and triumphs. Some aspects of the tale were glossed over but the gist of their turbulent story was vividly recounted.

Aslan were never hip but, unlike many contemporaries, they were never bland.