Is telly messing with your mind? Or are you just being paranoid?

No, I’m not talking about Tuesday’s Drugs Live: Cannabis on Trial (until next week).

But really, if someone from the past – or another planet – came to sit in on our viewing habits, they’d easily be confused by the meta-surreal coming out of our screens.

If Immigration Street had been a dystopian drama dreamed up by Charlie Brooker it would sound far-fetched.

But Love Productions’ plans to make a documentary about Derby Street, Southampton, for Channel Four have instead resulted in a media storm. It makes stark and complicated viewing.

Channel Four came up for some bad press for last year’s Benefits Street which made a star of White Dee and stoked a political hot potato about welfare.

Having waded into Birmingham’s James Turner Street and yanked people’s chains (not to mention boosting viewing figures) by choosing a handy hashtaggable title, it is not, in hindsight, all that surprising that Derby Street started to get twitchy about Immigration Street.

Flames of suspicion were fanned by the national press, meaning the making of this show itself became the story.

What’s heartening, and then sad, about the resulting Immigration Street (4oD; they kept the name, in spite of protests and fury) is that the first half represents a fairly harmonious melting pot community. Every resident had something good to say about loving their multicultural neighbours.

Unfortunately, by the second half, all trace of that happy, inclusive community is gone. Delroy, who starts off a chirpy, chatty Jamaican, cooking dinner for all his neighbours once a week, summed it up nicely – “Awww; that’s killed my buzz,” he said, on his front step as a bunch of blokes started spewing threats.

We’re left watching a warring, faceless clatter of tribes squaring up against each other. The programme could so easily have been a heart-warming celebration of a peaceful neighbourhood, until rumour and fear whipped up a media storm. At this point, the programme-makers were left with no choice, ethically or professionally, than to resist the pressure for censorship and keep cameras rolling on their subjects. I’m a journalist and I’m not so stupid that I don’t know the most important principle of democracy is a free press, to document things as they are.

But watching Immigration Street’s final scene (a gang pelting missiles at everyone and shouting “Get out of the area! Next time: gunshot!”) fade to black, the whole debacle felt unsatisfying and irresponsible. In fact, I felt as though I’d been watching someone bashing a beehive with a big stick and then flapping about not knowing how to take the stings. You can’t help wishing Love Productions had left Derby Street well alone.

Much more healing was Having You, a film screened on BBC One last week (now on iPlayer). An all-star cast including Anna Friel, Romola Garai, Andrew Buchan and Phil Davis made this superb, moving drama the perfect telly catch-up.

The ethereal Friel (who always does a superb turn as a tough cookie) is utterly convincing as a woman tracking down her child’s daddy after a one-night stand eight years ago.

It’s a perfect storm, in dramatic terms, and Friel hit a soft spot in my heart as Anna, a single mum (takes one to know one) frayed by constant questions, responsibilities and inner turmoil.

I won’t ruin the plot (all I will say is: BLUB!) but by the end, I felt a surge of affection for all the main characters and a sense of euphoric hope that Immigration Street sadly lacked.