My Crazy Parents (C4)

I'll Show Them Who's Boss (BBC2)

WE'RE so used to watching other people's misery, physical shortcomings and emotional distress on TV documentaries that it takes a lot to disturb us now. But My Crazy Parents was an unrelentingly bleak and shocking portrait of two families living with mental illness.

It reached a distressing point where the cameraman could hear - and so could viewers - but not see 17-year-old Michael struggling with his drunken father Graham, who was brandishing a hypodermic needle.

We learnt that he had been stabbing himself repeatedly with the needle. Graham's been battling depression and drinking since his wife died of breast cancer seven years ago. His youngest son is in care, but Michael opted to stay at home.

"When he's not drinking he's the most wonderful guy ever," confided Michael. Unfortunately, his father couldn't keep off alcohol, even breaking his word after swearing on his wife's grave that he wouldn't drink.

Few teenage sons could have coped with the mood swings and drunken abuse heaped on them by Graham. Michael, who has won a place at Oxford University, was determined to help and support his parent although by the end, as Graham's drinking worsened, he was saying: "I'm scared, I don't know what's going to happen. I've coped for so many years but I'm beginning to crack".

Elaine has a history of mental problems and admitted that, after reading about a doctor who jumped off a bridge with his two-year-old son, thought: "I wish I could have done that". Voices have urged her to kill herself and her children.

Despite the title of My Crazy Parents, it was 15-year-old daughter Lucy who most needed help. She was drinking heavily and self-harming, forever showing the camera the latest self-inflicted cuts on her arms.

She ended up in a residential psychiatric unit for teenagers. With her own background of mental illness, Elaine didn't find this strange or a shock as other people might. "It's part of life," she said.

The series brings the roles of documentary film-maker and social worker ever closer as subjects are quizzed on their feelings by the person behind the camera.

The story of a troubled industrial laundry company in I'll Show Them Who's Boss was light-hearted by contrast. Not that the board of County Linens were laughing at a £1m profit turning into a £700,000 loss. Business guru Gerry Robinson was allotted the task of sorting out the mess into which the family business had fallen.

To an outsider, the problems were obviously an elderly chairman who wouldn't give up responsibility and an operations director who'd been pushed out. Staff morale was low, the plants were poorly run and the outlook was altogether bleak.

Robinson was clearly exasperated by the family's refusal to acknowledge their faults and put one person in overall charge. But it was fun watching how he manoeuvred them round to doing what he wanted, letting them think it was their idea.