I hold these truths to be self-evident: love is better than hate; jaw-jaw is better than war-war; reconciliation is preferable to hostility; compromise is better than pig-headedness. So I am puzzled that so many people still resort to guns and violence. Disliking somebody is quite understandable (see my columns for ample evidence!) but does this mean you have to harm them (or innocent bystanders) physically? The Troubles in Northern Ireland caused death and injury to countless numbers before the IRA and the Loyalists decided to work together.

Ten Days of Terror (BBC2) retraced two events which, said presenter Peter Taylor, had a significant effect on the conflict in Northern Ireland. On October 30, 1987, a boat was intercepted in the English Channel and found to contain a large shipment of armaments for the IRA - a gift from Libya's kindly Colonel Gaddafy. Just over a week later, the IRA placed a bomb at the Remembrance Day parade in Enniskillen, killing 11 people and injuring 40. Even though this atrocity was hardly worse than many of the other killings perpetrated during 'The Troubles', it proved "a PR disaster for the IRA" and it "triggered fresh thinking". The IRA began talks with the SDLP, which until then had been sidelined because it didn't have any weaponry. Presenter Peter Taylor saw these two events as the start of the Peace Process - although one might wonder why it took so long to end the futile violence.

Strictly Baby Fight Club (Channel 4) looked at another example of mindless brutality: children involved in Thai boxing, which allows kicks as well as punches. The documentary focused on five children - some as young as five. As in some previous depressing documentaries (like Child Genius), the parents pushed their children hard to succeed, and it was unclear whether the children really enjoyed it or were simply intent on pleasing their parents. We saw a five-year-old girl crying as her parents pushed her into the ring. Some of the parents were living vicariously through their children. One father said of his son: "Sohan's living the life I should have lived."

Ian Fleming glorified guns and violence through his character, James Bond. True Stories: The Real James Bond (Five) suggested that Bond was based not only on people that Fleming knew when he worked for Naval Intelligence during the war but was also a wish-fulfilment alter ego for Fleming himself. Ian liked being compared to Bond, posing with guns and driving fast cars. "He enjoyed danger" and his books added "sex, snobbery and sadism" to the kind of escapist novels he read as a boy. The Bond books and films can be regarded as simply jolly adventure stories, but there is no doubting the indiscriminate violence and gun worship that pervaded them.

All the three documentaries so far mentioned were filled with the irritating padding so often used in this sort of programme. Ten Days of Terror showed the same scenes several times and was padded out with meaningless film of Peter Taylor writing in his diary. The James Bond programme contained countless shots of anonymous fingers tapping at a typewriter.

This sort of padding is just one example of the laziness that pervades much TV output. Another example of laziness is the way that producers use the same 'celebrities' over and over again. This week, Graham Norton hosted The British Academy Television Awards (BBC1) as well as presenting two editions of I'd Do Anything (BBC1) and appearing on his own Graham Norton Show (BBC2). Beat the Star, a lame new game show from ITV1, is presented by Vernon Kay, who is already over-familiar from Gameshow Marathon, Family Fortunes and Just the Two of Us (as well as being on Radio 1). And Points of View (BBC1) returned with a new presenter - Jeremy Vine, who already appears pointlessly at the beginning and end of every Panorama (BBC1). Oh, and he is on Radio 2 five days a week.