Dr Tanya, queen of the supernannies ... Photo: BBC
After putting your own shouty children to bed, why on earth you'd wish to sit down and watch other, even shoutier children, is a mystery to everyone but TV schedulers.
All across the country, children go down at 7pm and it's time for House of Tiny Tearaways (BBC3), starring the best evil-witch-lookalike child psychologist on air, Dr Tanya Byron.
Dr Tania is great because she realises, more than any of the rest (Supernanny, Nanny 911, Honey We're Killing the Kids) that having difficult children is never about the kids, and always about the parents.
Incidentally, how on earth do they persuade families to take part in a show called "Honey We're Killing the Kids"? Do the researchers pretend it's called "Honey, We're Taking the Kids to the Circus" and only reveal its true identity at the last minute?
So the kids tinker about in the background, whapping each other with sticks, and refusing to eat anything that isn't chocolate yoghurt, whilst up front the camera focuses on the parents faces.
Having five hours over a week to look at the families, whilst obviously voyeuristic, means that there is time for the stories to be told properly. The connections between the way you were brought up and what you then do to your own children (which you would think would be unsurprising by now) are constantly moving.
The woman who had been sent to boarding school at four, wouldn't sleep without her twins in her bed in case they thought they would get sent away too, was the most recent.
Supernanny Jo is great too, but hers is all about the positive, upbeat, shine-and-spittle methods to lead families back to acceptability. Dr Tanya, on the other hand, is about the complicated mix of what families really are. It's a reality show where you desperately don't want anyone to fall out or fail. And it's compulsive.
There is one problem though: recent studies have shown that parents who watch these types of programmes believe it normalises their own children's behaviour. That is, you think, "my child isn't quite as demon-possessed as that one, therefore they must be fine".
Which anyone who has been to an indoor play area recently, realises isn't actually the case at all. Which means - oh no - the kids are going to get worse, which means - oh yes! More Dr Tanya.
