Estate agents: we were right about the bastards all along

Television executives must be longing to make a programme about estate agents that casts the agents in a good light. There would be a national outrage, and in these Twittering, Facebooking times nothing is more appealing to a producer than a bulging digital postbag. Under Offer: Estate Agents on the Job (BBC2, Wednesday) is, sad to say, not that series. The factual six-parter goes behind the scenes with agents around the country, only to show us that we were right about the bastards all along.

Everyone we met was a pastiche of an archetype. There was Lewis Rossiter, in Exeter, a young man whose drinking banter and easy way with aphorism suggested that the BBC had cultivated him from David Brent’s rib. Or Gary Hersham, the rubber-faced agent to millionaires, who boasted about vile mansions in Cannes while his tailor, flown in from Italy, grappled with his fluctuating waist. The amiable posho, Archie, who hopes to flog a barren island in Scotland.