here is something to be said for mellow TV. I understand the need for a lot of television to fight aggressively for our attention in an era where we have a finite amount of it. “COMING UP!” every episode of First Dates seems to shout at me, to stop me from watching seven seasons of Mad Men in a row again, “ROMANTIC DATES. AWKWARD DATES. FRED DROPS SOMETHING. STAY, PLEASE.” But I know exactly how the episode will play out, so why even … “COME ON,” First Dates is pleading with me now. “I NEED THIS.” Fine, First Dates. I’ll watch you. But I’m not happy about it. In contrast, Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Christmas Fishing (Sunday, 8.10pm, BBC Two) is out there, meandering around, and if you want to watch it, watch it. It’s Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse fishing. That’s it. There is some narrative: Bob can’t fish, whereas Paul can identify a trout at 100 yards just by a fin flapping out of some rust-brown water; Bob makes them some simple riverside grub by pouring cans of potatoes into a frying pan perched on a camping stove; they criss-cross lazily along the UK, dipping into and out of various provincial rivers, then decamp to a pub or rented cottage for a glass of white wine (Paul) and a lager (Bob). Basically, though, it’s all the same: two men in their early 60s, both recuperating from fairly major heart conditions, burbling away in the background, casting lines, sometimes catching a fish if they are lucky. There is so little planning, so little structure, so little actual televisual entertainment, that it’s almost anti-TV: ambient comedy, with the same resting heart rate as a good nap. I mean, I love it. The Christmas special really is a festive highlight: Bob, with all the earnestness of a toddler, keeps asking Paul what Christmas means to him, and Paul grumpily answers “nothing” while trying to catch a salmon. And then they go here and there – through the River Tees, via a melancholy little trip to Bob’s childhood home, then out to sea, then back to the river again – and nothing, really, happens. Chris Rea turns up for one of the most spectacular TV cameos I’ve ever seen – socially distanced at the end of a pub dinner table, drinking from a cup and saucer of tea and telling the lads how his pancreas packed up – and there’s something charming to it. Men, broadly, are spectacularly bad at talking about or thinking about their health or taking their health in any way seriously, but here are three of them chatting with naked candour about the number of tablets they take every day, the various life-altering surgeries they’ve had, their new post-health-scare diets and their lifelong recovery, and I think that’s an important conversation to be having on British TV. They’ve just stealthed it into the consciousness via an unthreatening show about fishing. In many ways, Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is just The Trip on statins: none of the competitive impersonations, or the phone calls home, or the shagging, but a similar pair of jousting old stags of comedy, driving around scenic vistas trying to make each other lazily laugh. Learn something from this, The Rest Of TV! Stop telling me you’re going to entertain me and just entertain me!