Some human instincts linger on for rather too long. In the days when people needed to hunt (or gather) to survive, it was probably natural to hunt animals. Nowadays hunting seems to be merely a bloodsport for the rich and the foolish. Louis Theroux's African Hunting Holiday (BBC2) met some modern-day hunters on game farms in South Africa - "the world of trophy hunters and safari outfitters". Mostly Americans, they visit fenced farms where animals are bred primarily for shooting. Many of the people who run these places were originally farmers but they turned their farms over to game reserves because it is far more profitable. One farmer breeds lions and calls them "just a plain commodity".

"We're gonna kill today," says one American hunter who wants to shoot a zebra (it will cost him £675 if he manages to kill or maim it). His wife says: "I hear it's like a major rush when you kill your first animal." Louis Theroux, with his usual childlike repetitive "Why?" tries to discover the motivation for this killer instinct but, when he tries shooting a warthog ("to get in touch with the killer in me"), he finds he can't pull the trigger. He concludes: "I'll eat the meat but I won't kill the animal." However, he discovers one acceptable justification for these game farms: that some animals are bred there when they are unlikely to survive in the wild.

It's a dangerous life being a children's entertainer, as Clowns (BBC2) showed. One clown who entertains at children's parties says that young boys think it's funny to kick entertainers in a delicate part of their anatomy. "It's a very stressful job," confirms one clown called Tommy Tickle - and the entertainers certainly expend a lot of energy. Besides Tommy Tickle, we met Potty the Pirate, Mr Pumpkin and The Great Velcro. This last had to give up most of his children's entertaining, as he once lost his temper with an annoying child and slapped him. Now The Great Velcro concentrates on doing conjuring tricks at old people's homes, where the audience consists of "people of an older, more civilised generation". Despite the hardships, all the clowns seem to enjoy their work. Some even do quite well financially out of it ("100 quid an hour"), although Velcro says: "I started off with nothing and I've got most of it left."

The programme didn't make fun of the entertainers but viewed them sympathetically and added human touches by showing members of their families. Tommy Tickle, whose eldest daughter has been expelled from school, says: "Children today are different to how they were 15 years ago: no moral boundaries, no nothing."

Cotton Wool Kids (Channel 4) looked at modern children from another angle: the way that over-protective parents deny their children the freedom that young people used to enjoy. The commentary noted: "When they were children, these same parents freely roamed the streets and parks without a care. But today they believe the world is a far more dangerous place." So they cosset their children: driving them to school instead of letting them go alone; keeping them at home instead of allowing them to roam freely. One mother was even shown wanting to fit her daughter with a microchip so as to track her wherever she went.

Perhaps these extremely protective attitudes are justified, since the programme reported that "one in four young people say they have been the victim of crime in the past year". Yet fears are fuelled by the media, which heavily publicise cases of child abduction and paedophilia. No wonder children become obese if they are shut up at home all day, playing computer games. And children can only learn independence by being allowed independence. The point was proved when a boy was shown laboriously persuading his parents to trust him to take a bus to school instead of being driven there. His joy at achieving this simple goal was almost overwhelming.