I wish I had read Reg Little's article about Martine Brant in this newspaper last week before I watched The Devil's Whore (Channel 4), co-written by Brant and Peter Flannery. It is one of those historical dramas which expects viewers to know their history in some detail. It started with people dressed in period costume (but looking rather modern), doing mystifying things explained in badly-enunciated dialogue, further obscured by a noisy background. It made history a mystery. Who was who, and what were they doing?

After a while, it became clear that it was about the English Civil War in the 1640s. I know that one of my dictionaries says the Civil War was "fought against a background of confused political and religious issues” but this was confusion worse confounded. I couldn’t work out why John Lilburne (who sounded like "Milburn") looked quite comfortable although he "rots still in the Fleet [prison]". And nobody explained how a toff like the Earl of Manchester came to be leading the rebels, who otherwise consisted of people campaigning for equality and against privilege. This was the first episode of a four-part drama, but I don’t feel drawn to watch the remainder. As they said about deposing Charles I: the idea was good but the execution was clumsy.

After last week’s war-filled schedules, this was yet another TV programme about warfare. So how can we bring universal peace and brotherhood? One small step has been taken in Venezuela where, in 1975, José Antonio Abreu had the idea of socialising children (especially the poor and disadvantaged) through teaching them to play in an orchestra. He started by rehearsing 11 children in an underground car-park. His initiative led to "The System", which was described in How an Orchestra Saved Venezuela’s Children (BBC1). Thousands of youngsters are now being trained through 220 orchestras in Venezuela. The most famous is the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, which wowed audiences at last year’s BBC Proms. Focusing on music keeps children off the streets and away from drugs and crime, but it also gives them respect for themselves and for one another. Orchestral playing teaches them to work together –in harmony.

The film was uplifting – and inspired one to wonder how such initiatives might transform other societies. As the Simon Bolivar Orchestra’s lively conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, said: “If it’s possible in Venezuela, why not in the rest of the world?” The system has already been launched in Scotland – not in Edinburgh but at a ‘sink estate’ in Stirling – and there are plans to start it in England.

The children in Outnumbered (BBC1) are supposedly cute. Well, they say outlandish things and continually argue with their parents. Their parents also bicker constantly – but is this funny? The first series seemed like a typical family sitcom and the new, second series looks much the same, although giving more space to the children.

I sat in a restaurant the other day close to a table occupied by a family with ‘cute’ children shouting – and it was hell. Most of the jokes in Outnumbered signalled their arrival well in advance.

For a much less superficial look at family life, I’m Not Dead Yet (BBC4) was a film made by Elizabeth Stopford about the conflicts between her mother Vicky, her aunt Camilla, and her grandmother Ruth. Why was there such a gulf between twin sisters Vicky and Camilla? Camilla had stayed in the family home, looking after Ruth for 35 years, while Vicky moved to France.

Only gradually did it become clear that the twins had unhappy childhoods and that both had been sexually abused by their father. Camilla avoided her father’s advances but thought that Vicky gave in to them. Both twins resented their mother, who never intervened in their father’s outrages. Illustrated by old home movies, it was a sad and complex story with no clear resolution, but very moving in its depiction of a damaged family.