Down to Earth & John Safran versus God

It can be hard to believe that Down To Earth (ABC, Saturday, 7.30 pm) and John Safran versus God (SBS, Monday, 8.30pm) are both a product of the same medium: television.

Down to Earth is an amiable, friendly show. The second week into its fourth season it is a kind of bland and English Sea Change, about the Brewers, a family who have relocated from London to Devon to work on an Organic Produce farm. It is not as old fashioned as other shows of this ilk, like Born and Bred or Heart Beat and invokes some contemporary issues (in the gentlest of ways) such as racism and teenage sexuality. It is genuine, warm and the kind of television that you might put on on a Saturday night so you can feel like you have a group of friends around. My technical term for this is Doona television. This week Jackie (Denise Welch) is back in town expecting Tony (Ricky Tomlinson) to take her back, and Frankie (Angela Griffin) is in a serious accident.

If Down to Earth is Doona television, John Safran versus God is tent-in-a-snow-blizzard (minus the sleeping bag) television. Or perhaps no-tent in a downpour-in-a-leech-infested-rainforest television. If it were a sport it would be an extreme one. Safran is, after all, the man who, seven years ago, streaked through Jerusalem to 'Up there Cazaly' in St Kilda colours. It was meant as a kind of religious offering to his team and yes, they went on to win. John Safran versus God makes you (okay, me) grimace and squirm and rush out of the room with your eyes closed before you tip-toe back in (though it is not as if the guy is really in your living room. You'd hope not, anyway) to watch him continue his possibly brilliant, possibly stupid, antics. Like going to the UK and asking a senior Muslim cleric to get a fatwa put on Rove McManus. His chutzpah is so great, his skin so thick, that you begin to wonder whether you are watching X-Files repeats and he is actually an alien.

John Safran versus God is the result of hundreds of hours of footage shot on five continents. It is his first television series since Music Jamboree, and sees apostles of Buddhism, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Racism, Islam, Scientology and Voodoo come under his intense, if beady-eyed, gaze.

I think this is excellent television, but I must confess that in between being doubled up with laughter I wondered about things like ethics, and whether this show was actually legal. The countless legal disclaimers scattered through the fatwa segment suggest the lawyers at SBS have their doubts as well. But no matter, because before I can work out what I really think Safran has moved on and is meeting people from some kind of Peyote Church in Arizona and about to take a spirit walk into the desert. Once there he will drink Peyote tea, and vomit - to camera- and perhaps find God. The drugs make his voice less grating, which is a relief, as he continues to address the camera throughout his trip. He doesn't find God and says he thinks it is unfair that people who don't have spiritual realisations are told that it is because they are too cynical. I'm on the side of the Peyote (or whatever its called) Church on this one. You, John Safran, are a funny and smart guy, but the only spirit you're ever going to get is the holy spirit of the AFL. But you've got seven more episodes to convince me I'm wrong.