I complain from time to time about how the conceit of “the journey” has become the chief organising principle of modern documentaries, as if all life were really a road movie waiting to be made. Just consider how many unnecessary shots of motorways or railway lines you watch in an average week's discerning viewing. But there is an older and still more tired format that may date back to the New Testament. This is the familiar tale of hope triumphing over adversity, of determination facing down impossible odds, of crises that somehow come all right on the night (or in the case of Christ, a couple of nights after). Each documentary that follows this template ends, metaphorically, with our hero sailing across the finishing line, arms aloft, to the music of Vangelis.

You rarely see a tale of ambition thwarted, valour unrewarded, hard work done for nothing. You never see a film based on W. C. Fields's wise dictum: “If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No point being a damn fool about it.” Yet, if you looked closely, there were a couple of signs last night that television might be recognising that triumph need not be the only game in town. Imagine, returning for a new series, gave us Dangerous Liaisons: When Akram Met Juliette. Without too much reading between the lines, it was clear that this meeting of the talents of the highly wrought French actress Juliette Binoche and the British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan was not merely dangerous to their reputations but nearly fatal.

Their collaboration was on a piece of dance-theatre premiered at the National Theatre in September and it was obvious by curtain-up that not even those responsible were very pleased with it. Binoche's dance coach said she had “improved a lot”. Binoche said that she was masking her bruises with foundation. Khan, facing a seven-month world tour, threatened: “We will get there in the end.” And the critics? Well, we weren't actually told what they said but here are a couple of sample opinions: “As monumental vanity projects go, this one is surprisingly absorbing. It is also intermittently excruciating.” (The Times). “You would think their collaboration would come up with something stronger than sketches about whether he leaves the toilet seat up. But no.” (The Independent).

Observing, for seven long months, this mismatch of an actress who couldn't dance much and a dancer who could act a little was Imagine's star Alan Yentob, who wore the expression of a bystander at a road accident. He didn't actually say the piece was a stinker but he must have known. We could tell. Although there may be legitimate debate as to exactly when we knew: certainly by the time they came up with the title, in-i; possibly when Nick Hytner saw a rehearsal and admitted that without words he would have little idea what was going on and probably right back when Binoche was allowed to come up with her idea that the piece should be about her falling in lust with a bloke in the audience at the cinema where she has gone to see Fellini's Casanova.

Buried in this embarrassing film was, I am happy to say, a decent if uncritical profile of Khan, whose claim to fame is that he fuses Kathak Indian dancing with modern dance. According to Yentob, he is one of the best dancers in the world. The host wisely stayed for the most part out of Binoche's way.

Also apparently headed for disaster is Jamie Oliver who in his hubris believed that he could wean Rotherham off chips and kebabs. Even the successes notched up by Jamie's Ministry of Food are beginning to look fatuous. Having taught 1,000 Yorkshirefolk to stir fry coriander and sirloin in a steel mill, Oliver was pleased that so many preferred it to their usual gruel. Of course they did. It was sirloin steak. His main trouble is that his pupils, when not falling out with one another (“I don't like two-faced people”, etc), cannot be bothered to pass on his recipes. Plan B, to incorporate cooking lessons into company lunch hours, is also getting nowhere fast. “I'm not going to get Rotherham tattooed on my arse for that,” he lamented. I have an idea for a series, though. We get these chefs, led by Ramsay and Oliver, and we try to teach them not to use the F-word in every other sentence. It won't work but it might make interesting telly.

Sadly, Sunshine, BBC One's soppy comedy drama with all those good actors and writers, looks doomed too. It is getting soppier and less comedic by the week. Yesterday, Bernard Hill as grandpa got news of his terminal illness and Steve Coogan, as his gambling addict son, burst into tears having taken his boy's savings to the cleaners. We even endured a recitation of the story about the Christmas football match played in the trenches of Flanders. Not even a tiny cameo by Caroline Aherne could extract proceedings from its mire of sentimentality.

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