It’s week five in Cambridge, and the dark clouds of exam season have well and truly descended. The air in the library is feeling notably stuffier; the grip of each frantically-scribbling inhabitant is getting decidedly sweatier. The lasting sense that the dizzy humidity of Easter term is about to break, and come raining down in sticky-sweet, celebratory showers of Sainsbury’s champagne rustles impatiently through exam halls: twitching in the fingers that stutter over laptop keyboards, racing to complete those final few essays. The storm is very nearly over; but, for now, it’s best to stay indoors.

The outside world may look desirable, but it’s smothered by a layer of celebratocumuli: intrusive, cloud-like creatures who float around, rejoicing in their own freedom and repeatedly asking you how many days it is until you finish and can join them in condensing blissfully into lighter-than-air nothingness.

So while you wait, palms pressed up against the window, for your own revision storm to blow over, satisfy the need for the inconspicuous company of comfort television. When real life humans will do awful things like suggest that you change out of your coffee stained pyjamas, friends of the television world offer up an alternative world of mind-numbing, sugar-coated, easy existence. Don’t try to find solace in clever, critically acclaimed shows; we’re too tense for Narcos, and no one has the mental resilience to keep up with the political multi-plots of House of Cards. No: I’m talking about the pure, unadulterated sweetness of guilty pleasure television, currently waiting in abundance on catch-up TV players to assist you in revision escapism. 

For starters, try the eternally Instagram-filtered plushness of Made In Chelsea (E4). You don’t have to know who Tiff, JP, Binky, or any of their Waitrose-approved named friends are to enjoy the decadent cinematography with which the lives of Britain’s young elite are captured. Episode seven of the most recent series opens with a peach-tinted shot of avocado slices being carefully arranged on a breakfast tray by perfectly manicured hands, whilst the drowsy, morning sun beats of alt-pop band Cmpny play nonchalantly in the background. Made in Chelsea is basically a middle-class, multi-sensory get away for the social media generation. No offence to the English Faculty Library, but everyone and everything is just more beautiful in SW3. Plus it’s much more fun to watch once you’re at Cambridge, where you get the added bonus of being able to play ‘Pitt Club Bingo’ during all the crowd shots.

But perhaps, rather than the other worldly brand ambassadors of Chelsea, you want to watch ‘real people’. Fear not, for the greatest programme perhaps ever to be broadcast on the BBC is back for its fourth series. From the commercialised format that brought you The Great British Bake-Off, The Big Allotment Challenge and even The Great Pottery Throw Down (yes, really), returns the kitschy marvel that is The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC iPlayer)! Forget Masterchef; when it comes to the genre of ‘normal folk competitively doing domestic tasks whilst the nation watches’, TV doesn’t get twee-er than this.

For those uninitiated into this wonderful mix of village-fête patriotism and talent show, The Great British Sewing Bee takes 10 amateur sewers and sets them up in an edgy-looking warehouse somewhere on the Thames to participate in a knock-out style competition of fabric-based challenges. Sugary silliness is required throughout; a 1940s soundtrack, plucky team-spirit and mild innuendo (“Can you see my gusset?” smirks grandmother of nine, Joyce, whilst fiddling with a particularly complex baby-grow) are all key ingredients. But the combination of astute judges (Saville Row’s suave Patrick Grant and the fearsome fashion-academic Esme Young) and ridiculously complicated creations makes this a genuinely impressive (and often tense) watch. Thanks to some wise producer, the sewers' nerves and the comic relief are left in the capable hands of Claudia Winkleman. Winkleman’s wit is even sharper than her Cleopatra fringe-and-eyeliner combination, and it is her cool-girl humour that holds the whole thing together.

If you’re still not sold, let me just mention that episode two is 'Children’s Week'. No, this doesn’t mean that the BBC is arming seven year olds with needles, but that the garments are fiddlier, more imaginative and, most importantly, more impossibly tiny than ever before. The Laws of Cute which state that small versions of things are inherently more adorable do not lie to people. Unless they introduce a Puppy Week, comfort television has reached its peak. So take an hour out to fantasise about Claudia Winkleman being your best friend, and discover the soothing properties of watching a fully-grown man flap manically over his wilting appliqué.