The title must have been wilfully provocative. Even if you are one of the few to believe Egypt was uninhabited before Europeans stumbled across it, then it's hard to counter the received wisdom that modern Egyptology began after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Jean-François Champollion's subsequent decoding of hieroglyphics. So to find out the subject of The Man Who Discovered Egypt (BBC4) was Flinders Petrie, a Victorian Brit of whom I'd never heard and who only started digging around the Nile in the late 19th century, came as rather a shock.

As all the talking heads in the film made clear, a more accurate description of Petrie would be the man who pioneered the techniques of modern archaeology by making sure excavations were conducted in an orderly manner, that finds weren't ransacked or looted and everything was meticulously recorded. Measurement was Petrie's tour de force: for a relaxing day out, his parents used to take him to Stonehenge where he would record every detail to the nearest centimetre.

This was yet another of those programmes that BBC4 does so well; it will be a crime against intelligence if the Beeb decides to do away with the channel as part of its cost-cutting. Not least because – apart from opening up subjects that most of us didn't know we were interested in – its documentaries are all made on a shoestring. That's part of their charm. Shoestring is not a synonym for crap or amateur. Admittedly it's hard to go far wrong in Egypt, but some of the cinematography was fabulous. Rather, it's that they are invariably made by people who are passionate about their subject.

Apart from one misguided stunt of dressing up in a pink all-in-one – Petrie's preferred excavation attire, apparently – the archaeologist Chris Naunton was the ideal presenter: enthusiastic but not hyper, knowledgeable, prepared to listen to other experts and, above all, happy to let Petrie take centre stage. There were moments when I would have liked to have known more: surely Petrie must have been gutted when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun? Not just because the Egyptian authorities clamped down on exporting artefacts thereafter, but because his thunder had been stolen by one of his former pupils. Mostly, however, the hour was a joy.

Most tellingly, this film showed you don't have to make your subject particularly likable. Naunton may have been prepared to forgive Petrie his faults, but I was less inclined. Petrie was a big fan of eugenics, which wasn't such a dirty word in the early 20th century as it has since become, but the idea was no less distasteful. Mostly though, he was a terrible old grump, whose idea of a good night in was reading with a candle balanced on his forehead and moaning about the gramophone and all other aspects of modern life. There again, to be fair, it's odds-on that Petrie would have disliked me even more than I did him.

Perhaps the biggest turn-up for the books, though, was the reappearance of Margaret Mountford as an Egyptian scholar. How relieved she must be to be free of The Apprentice (BBC1). If ever a franchise was dying on its feet, it's this. Lord Sugar, Karren Brady and Nick Hewer all look utterly bored. As well they might. I knew how they felt.

It's not just the tiresomeness of the narcissistic contestants that's the problem – you'd expect nothing less as many others have already pointed out – it's that the whole format is shot to pieces. Last night the teams were asked to invent a household object in two days flat and get orders for it from Amazon and Lakeland. If business was that easy the country wouldn't be in the mess it is now so, to only Sugar's amazement, both teams failed horribly.

The women, it is true, were worse; but only just. Ignoring the product that had got the tentative thumbs-up from focus groups in favour of the one everyone had hated wasn't the brightest of moves, but then who came up with the idea of expecting anyone to create a half-decent product in the absurd time-frame? Fans will no doubt say the show is not about entrepreneurship, it's entertainment. The trouble is, it's no longer much fun for anyone.

One business that's on the up is pawnbroking, and I was rather looking forward to Cash Britain (BBC1). Unfortunately there were no previews available due to technical problems at the BBC. Cash flow, I'd guess.