As 7pm approached last night I reminded my 15-year-old son that The Diary of Anne Frank was about to start on BBC1. "Let's watch it together," I suggested brightly, in front of the sitting room fire.
This is surely what schedulers are intending, by running a family friendly and worthy drama, while The One Show is taking a break.
I had a vision of the two of us making a TV date for the week. But my son had other ideas. He looked at me with utter disdain, and said there was no way he was watching it.
I protested as he headed for the door, doublequick, and asked for his reasons. He said he'd read The Diary of Anne Frank at school, and that was quite enough.
"I know the story well, what's the point of watching it, it's boring, they hide in an attic for a long time and then they are betrayed to the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp."
He headed upstairs, after reminding me that his favourite channels were Dave and BBC3, not BBC1, leaving me to reflect on my failure and to watch alone.
I agree with Sam Wollaston in today's Guardian about the show, made by independent producer Darlow Smithson: the acting was good, the sense of jumpiness and suppressed agitation and fear amongst the adults brilliantly portrayed, although there was too much theatrical rain.
But perhaps, judged purely as a TV drama there is a problem. We all know the ending, and the experience of being cramped up in an attic is not that, well - dramatic.
On reflection I will say this for my son: he spent the day intermittently catching up on the test match between Australia and South Africa, doing three hours of GCSE revision, and cheering on his school's football
team in a holiday friendly.
I should also add that his favourite television programme, by a country mile, is the blokey Mock the Week, and that all drama - as opposed to films - beyond Skins and Scrubs gets a pretty short shrift. Nor is he, or his friends, watching Celebrity Big Brother.
Still, I'll be Anne Franking all week. And I'm hoping that when my teenage daughter returns from hurling herself down ski slopes tomorrow she'll be joining me on the sofa.
I'd be interested to see what the breakdown of viewing figures shows. Are young people watching? Do women find it easier to empathise with the moving plight of a doomed family and teenage girl?
