Looking for a TV series to watch? Soaps aren’t what they were - Susan Morrison

Coronation Street Christmas 1963, with Margot Bryant as Minnie Caldwell, Violet Carsonas Ena Sharples and Lynne Carol as Martha Longhurst

We don't really like soap operas. Well, they aren’t what they once were. Look at Coronation Street.

My granny used to watch it back in the 60s. The very first black and white episode centred around a shocking family drama. A very young Ken Barlow had gone off to uni and had come home for the weekend, only to be appalled by the fact that the family dined with a sauce bottle on the table. Ken had gone middle-class.

His brother also had bits of a motorbike in the front room, I think. Totally normal back then, but it fair put the snobby Barlow boy’s gas in a peep.

According to the papers, these days Corrie revolves around murder, mayhem and dodgy drug dealings in the Rovers Return. Annie Walker would never have stood for that.

We are fond of a good quiz show, but he gets annoyed when I get more answers than him, which I always do.

And we both get annoyed by the hosts, who all emanate Oxbridge levels of smugness, apart from the new bloke on University Challenge.

He seems like a nice lad, but for some reason they’ve made him sit on Jeremy Paxman’s chair and they haven’t adjusted the height. Amol Rajan peeks over the desk looking like a particularly anxious supply geography teacher.

So we’ve been surfing about on the world wide web, where old telly programmes hide. “The Good Life” is still great, “Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" are still scarily accurate, I suspect, and "Steptoe and Son" is still hilarious.

They have trigger warnings on them and quite rightly so. Today’s delicate sensibilities probably can’t take these hard-hitting programmes.

Young protesters about to glue themselves to motorway gantries would probably be crushed to discover that Tom and Barbara Good were self-sufficient pioneers who recycled, reused and net-zeroed in Surbiton long before them.

Radical student firebrands apparently uncovering the reality of how this country is governed would be miffed to discover the truth was revealed 40 years ago in one speech from Sir Humphrey Appleby.

Challenging playwrights today would be crushed to see the savage loving complicated relationship between Harold and Albert brilliantly written and performed not just once, but week after week after week.

But never has a trigger warning been better deployed than before “Terry and June”. No-one needs to see that.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, June Whitfield is a personal goddess of mine. That woman delivered a punchline in a glance.

She never failed to grace any scene she appeared in, but for the love of god, what was that woman doing married to that buffoon? Why does he keep inviting the boss to tea/lunch/dinner without telling her?

Doesn’t Sir Whatisface have a home? Why can’t Terry even walk in a straight line without tripping over the shrubbery? Is it because of all the sherry they drink?

And why, with the honourable exception of Dame June (see above) is the acting so bad, the characters so two-dimensional and writing so appalling?

The interior decor is enough to have mild-mannered viewers scrambling for the hills.

Yes, Terry and June richly deserve that pre-watch warning.