The title of Jamie Cooks Italy (Channel 4, Monday, 8.30pm) begged the question of where on Earth master Oliver would possibly find a frying pan large enough, unless the massive skillet shop is next to the big ego store where celebrity chefs do their shopping. As it turned out, Jamie was going to cook Italian food, but that would not have sounded so bouncy, so fresh, so Jamie.

His gig this time is to travel round the country with his Italian mate, mentor (and occasional translator), Gennaro, learning from the nation’s nonnas, or grandmothers. Nonna Francine showed Jamie how to cook squid with caper stuffing. “I just love her,” he burbled. “I want to take her home.” Nonna Marina, 72, “smashed” two rabbit dishes, high praise indeed from Oliver, who pronounced the food not just “delicioso” but “ultimo”.

He was so busy stuffing his face he stopped talking for several seconds, which has to be a world’s first. The grub looked gorgeous, the scenery was wonderful - I saw those Aeolian Islands first, so back off, lady - and the books will sell by the shedload. Job done, my son.

If a young Jamie Oliver had brought his winning formula before Dragons’ Den (Sunday, BBC2, 8pm), even Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones might have cracked smiles and invested in him. Then again, maybe not. Now the longest surviving investors, Deborah and Peter Jones have decided they are now “characters” and can get away with shticks that would have another dragon run out of town for being tiresome.

Deborah likes to play nice, then turn hardball. Peter goes the other way, at one point telling some poor man who had invented a clean air, anti-pollution, pram: “There is something about you that is just horrible.” He then did a 180 turn and offered to invest. Strangely enough, the horrible guy decided he would be better off with another dragon’s money.

This week’s no-hoper was a singer songwriter who offered to write personalised tunes for £75 a pop. He wanted £300,000 investment. How was he doing at the moment? Well, he explained, he was still in the “pre-revenue stage”. In other words he had not earned a bean. Deborah decided to launch into song. “Go now go, walk out the door,” chanted her inner Gloria Gaynor. Survive that, ears.

The Dragons’ Den format is becoming tired and predictable. All that exposed brickwork looks so 1980s Docklands, and the contestants play the same roles every week: the one with the good idea, the eejit, and the nervous sort who bursts into tears on being exposed as not knowing the difference between profit and turnover. What it needs is another Duncan Bannatyne. Failing that, a dragon from Game of Thrones could emerge from the lift of doom. I’d like to see Peter and Deborah being sarky then.

Tower Block Kids (Channel 5) could have given Jamie Cooks Italy a lesson in titles. There were tower blocks, and there were kids talking about their lives in tower blocks. The kids, happy and loved, were doing all right; it was the adults who urinated in the lifts and took drugs on the stairs that were the problem. Perhaps that dragon could pop round once it is finished in the den.

WELL done everybody. It hasn’t been easy, this second series of The Handmaid’s Tale (Sunday, Channel 4, 9pm). We should have known when it opened with a mock mass execution that there were not going to be many chuckles ahead in the continuing story of a dystopian America that oppresses women, but my they have made us suffer. Violence. Aching sadness. Vast swathes when naff all happened.

Happily, and there’s a word I thought I’d never use in connection with this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel, those who did not weaken were treated to a doozy of a season finale. Serena gathered her fellow wives together to address the council. Their husbands, including Serena’s other half Fred (Joseph Fiennes), sat stupefied as the monstrous regiment asked if the reading ban could be lifted so children might enjoy the bible.

“We thought you’d never ask!” said Fred as the rest of the men joined in the cheering. With that they all went off to the local Gilead branch of Waterstone’s to fill their boots. No, not really I’m afraid. A lesson had to be learned. “God send me an obedient woman,” sighed Fred. The rage on the face of June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) spoke for us all.

This was a necessary tieing up of threads, but there were some genuine shocks as well as the story geared up for a third series. According to show-runner Bruce Miller in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, some ten, count ‘em, seasons have been sketched out. I don’t think my nerves, or attention span, could handle that, but given the ends left dangling, season three is a must. If they could ease us in gently, maybe sprinkle a kitten or two in the opening scene, it would be most appreciated.