Four in a Bed - Channel Four

Four In A Bed

(Channel 4, 5pm)

You can almost hear the producers' brains whirling around: "Hmm, we need a new teatime favourite. Something a little bit Come Dine With Me with a nod to Through The Keyhole."

And so Four In A Bed was born. The show is excruciating reality TV at its best. Unsuspecting B&B owners invite rivals from across the country into their beloved establishments only to have them ripped apart over the smallest of faults. Dust on the picture frame? Fingerprint on the mirror? You're going down.

From the comfort of our sofas, we get to have a good old snoop around the good, bad and downright ugly examples of the great British B&B. This series has seen it all, from five-star luxury guest houses to cheap-and-cheerful butterfly farms where visitors have to sleep in teepees. Seriously.

Last night was somewhere between the two. Hosts Ruth and Mike opened up Crake Trees Manor, a rural farmhouse in the Cumbrian hills that offers gorgeous plush bedrooms – and a tin caravan out in the yard with no electricity or running water. The en-suite bathroom I hear you ask? Why it's just a 3am hop, skip and jump over the pitch black car park.

And of course that was the obvious choice for creature-comfort-loving townies Teresa and Clive. The harrowing experience was enough to reduce poor old Teresa to tears. "This is not fun. How are we supposed to cope with this?" she wailed.

But relax woman. You think you've got problems? Back indoors, Joseph and Kalpana have only been given six coat hangers in their wardrobe.

Wah!

Now, most hosts usually treat their guests to a relaxing day of sightseeing or even a trip to the local spa or five-star restaurant.

But this was the north and that's not how they do things up there.

Ruth and Mike's vote-winning activity? Why assembling one of their dismantled stone walls in the biting rain of course.

After alienating half of their guests with the task, everything rested on the all-important breakfast. But, shock horror, the edges of the bacon were burnt and the poached egg wasn't served on the toast. At least the orange juice was good. Thank God.

But it's this petty level of Grade A nitpicking that is making the show so popular. It's got all the things we Brits are good at: snooping, silently seething and having a good old moan about it all at the end of the day.

But while the guests see no problem in bitching and moaning about the tiniest of things, woe betide anyone who doesn't play fair when it comes to the voting. Come on chaps, that's just not cricket.

Tonight is the final show of the week when the guests sit around a kitchen table and pay what they think each of the rooms is worth, pulling absolutely no punches on their opinions of each other's B&Bs.

Just watch the butter knives fly.