The Building Inspector Is Coming (C4, 9pm); Michael Wood On Beowolf (BBC4, 9pm)

THE Romans had a simple way of dealing with builders whose constructions collapsed – they killed them. Birmingham City Council has a different, but no less effective method.

They send in Mark “they call me the Sheriff” Harding. He’s a building inspector and could appear at your door at any moment.

The Cutting Edge documentary explores the world of loft conversions, which occupy most of the inspector’s time, and unlawful extensions. Some of the people we meet prove as interesting as the things they do to their homes.

Take cross-dresser George. He’s a DIY fanatic, so far spending 15 years doing up his terraced house to make it “really ladylike, sexy, feminine”.

He began ripping the guts out of the building before applying for planning permission. Fortunately, his standard of workmanship is high enough to get the Sheriff’s seal of approval.

George’s third wife, Marlene, lives next door in her own house. She’s upset by his cross-dressing and has, according to him, “made it clear she doesn’t want me to go further – obviously I want to go further”.

Her attitude is that he can do what he wants in his own house. Not that he can do much, as only one room is habitable.

Some exchanges between inspector and homeowner aren’t as amicable. The Sheriff rides into town to interrogate a persistent offender under caution, pointing out that it’s a criminal offence to proceed with work before submitting a planning application. Break the law and you could be fined £5,000 for each offence.

He can be a bit of a social worker too.

As when Steve and Lisa’s loft conversion falls into the hands of dodgy builders.

They have three children with another on the way and need extra space.

They opt for the cheapest builder, who botches the job. The roof lets in rain. The Sheriff is horrified on inspecting the work but can help the couple by sending in the enforcement officer and hopefully making the builder put it right.

THE BBC’s poetry season sends historian Michael Wood to trace the birth of English poetry through Beowolf, the Anglo-Saxon classic that influenced the country’s literary heritage.

Red scarf wrapped around his neck, he traipses the length and breadth of the land in Michael Wood On Beowolf.

When he’s not talking, the action switches to a recreation of an Anglo- Saxon hall in Kent, where actor Julian Glover performs his one-man show of the poem at a Saxon feast.

The story of Beowolf, set mainly in Denmark, tells of a chap who finds a monster, saves his people and finds himself in the process. Not quite EastEnders, but exciting enough.

Wood admits mystery surrounds the poem. It’s not known where or when the piece was original performed, or about the retellings that shaped into the poem.

He gets excited when the British Museum allows him to see the original manuscript – “some would say it’s our nation’s most precious literary relic” – and to film it for the first time.

Then Wood is off on his travels to find links to the Beowolf story, including a great ship with an undisturbed burial chamber at Sutton Hoo, a ceremonial helmet, a royal residence in Suffolk and a typical Anglo-Saxon monastic site at Jarrow.

Bede’s landscape, he suggests, is one of the root places of Englishness, although such is the rapidity with which Wood traverses the land that I was still taking that in and he’d already moved further North.