Do you need some extra rage in your life? No? Oh, come off it, maybe you’re a bit too full of love for your fellow man?

Road Rage Britain – Caught on Camera will bring you down to earth with a bump.

The first episode of this brutal ITV1 series about temper tantrums on Tarmac was very depressing viewing. As if to console footie fans over the England team’s potential to cock it up, we’re told our fair isle leads the waves... for road rage.

If you’ve been anywhere near Oxford’s roads on a bike, you’ll know that generally, it’s a case of two tribes going to war.

Cyclists inspire a lot of angry debate about the whole Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad attitude. As ITV footage shows, life on a bike is a pretty vulnerable existence. Thanks to astonishingly violent footage collected on smartphones, the view from the saddle is that most motorists, chippy about cyclists jumping red lights, being in the way or “not paying road tax”, are like coiled springs. Watching this programme, with epic swearing tirades that would make Malcom Tucker blush, makes you feel the road is a Molotov cocktail of adrenaline and insecurity.

The drivers interviewed – taxi drivers, white van men, the usual stereotypes – can seemingly mouth off forever about their pedal-powered counterparts.

How, then, to bring a little love and understanding to the situation? Swap ’em over, stick the sandal-wearing chick in a transit (she loved it: being king of the road, and I get that) and stick Mr Angry and Northern on a bike. Hey presto.

For White Van Man Gaz being on a bike emasculates and bewilders him – “exhaust fumes, flies in me mouth, I’m out of breath,” he pants as he trudges along in the cycle lane miserably. “Gimme engine any day.”

Many bike riders might be tempted to enjoy this. But, does it help the situation? Not unless the only lesson is that driving a transit is great and most men are ragey and violent.

Basically: depressing, so don’t watch it, go for a walk instead.

Even more depressing and yet fascinating (I find the two go hand in hand, like a Radiohead binge) is the dystopian CCTV – Caught On Camera on Channel Four.

This fly-on-the-wall doco turns the lens on the people who watch people living in Southampton’s 19 council-owned tower blocks. Queasy viewing best avoided, except it does throw up important points.

Either the programme-makers didn’t care about the irony of us goggling at people goggling at people. Or, er, that was the point. Basically, we’re all being watched by Big Brother to some extent (5.9 million closed-circuit cameras in Britain), but your right to privacy is apparently curtailed if you happen to be a council tenant in this south coast city.

Luckily (well, I found their spirit perversely cheering), this does not stop Southampton’s finest blazing, bonking and beer-swilling under the watchful gaze of the eery Concierges.

It’s not a glamorous job, watching the neighbours’ everyday behaviour and you can understand their disgust.

So many of the tower block’s inhabitants feel it’s fine to pee in the lift that this is made into a jaunty little montage.

Sometimes, the CCTV watchers bellow at youths gathering in hallways and can protect inmates, sorry, neighbours, by barring potential attackers from entering the block if needed.

Sometimes the service keeps people safe.

But as one youth, who is far from stupid, points out, the system is rigged up to prosecute rather than prevent.

A CCTV operator, on hearing a caller from one of the flats was about to be stabbed, asks “Who are they?” before “Are you OK?”

Treating people as potential perpetrators or witnesses of crime rather than victims is a very sorry state indeed.