THE X Factor has a lot to answer for.

Top of the list, though, has to be sob stories which, judging by the BBC’s latest Saturday night great hope, are no longer confined to reality TV.

Prized Apart is awash with tears, hard-luck tales (“I grew up with epilepsy”), self-pity and even “best bits” series highlights for the losers.

And as of tomorrow night, a deceased parent mentioned during contestants getting “presents from home”, which have no place on a game show.

Except it doesn’t consider itself in such restrictive terms as ‘game show’.

BBC1 clearly believes, wrongly, it has created something epic.

Contestants are “adventurers” doing action-packed but ultimately boring tasks in Morocco while their partners are stuck in a Farnborough Airport hangar with shocking acoustics.

There is a vastly over-inflated sense of what they’ve achieved here.

The adventurers are “thousands of miles away in Morocco” (it’s actually not even 1,300) and the challenges are “awe-inspiring” and “the ultimate test of nerve” when they basically involve safety wires and drops at best.

At worst? Reggie Yates: “Kate has dropped her bucketful of camel poo.”

As have the BBC.

We’re meant to invest emotionally in the contestants but when so many are tearfully “doing it for my kids” and one of them is a moaning drama queen named Aaron, the weekly loved-up video messages home simply raise bile.

Especially when he tried to guess which of the three at-risk contestants would return: “My psychic feelings are telling me Steffan, Kennedy or Elizabeth.”

Uncanny.

Almost as annoying is this show’s obsession with “glam gran” Katie when she’s only 48, not on day release from a home.

And I cannot for the life of me work out why the bottom three are jetted home each week to stand on illuminated squares for a quiz that involves them answering zero questions (that’s their teammate’s job) and then the two survivors flying back out again.

Or why nobody piped up: “Erm, this isn’t great for the environment, guys.”

The main problem is it’s dragged out beyond breaking point with clips of adventurers getting spa treatments or fannying around with a traditional band. Once Morocco’s done, there are still 25 minutes to fill with Emma Willis’s idiot-proof quiz that’s had the question: “Torvill and Dean won Olympic gold in 1984 to which piece of music?”

(For the record, it wasn’t “Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata” or “Handel’s Water Music”.)

Prized Apart owes much to X Factor but equally to The Apprentice.

Two teams compete in a task, three adventurers (candidates) get sent to Farnborough (the boardroom), one goes home (you’re fired) while the rest speculate who’ll rejoin them in Morocco (the house) and remain in the process (erm, the process).

We even had an almost direct lift of the famous Marrakech shopping task episode, only with less kosher chicken and more stuffing of fruit down tops, followed by the high drama of who’d collected the most oranges from Fes medina.

Hope springs eternal, though, as Aaron enthused: “Positive mental attitude.

“If you see it and believe it, it’s going to happen.”

Alright-ee then. I see a vision, a glorious vision, this show axed before series two.

But knowing the BBC, I just don’t believe it.

Spudulikes...

John McEnroe bossing Wimbledon.

A BBC2 Dad's Army repeat getting more viewers than Glasto headliner Kanye West.

HMRC advertising its tax credits during the parade of jobless, Z-list ex-housemates re-entering Big Brother.

Clarkson, Hammond and May's final Top Gear, with a life-sized elephant in the room and SUV testing "just off Ladyhole Lane".

Wimbledon's subtitles changing Bulgaria's Tsvetana Pironkova to "The Tana Pahrump River".

The Chase answer of the week: "Which boxer was called 'The Italian Dragon' and 'Pride of Wales'?" "Muhammad Ali."

And Love Island's Jon to Hannah: "Your boobs are the best thing in the entire world. They're better than... than nuclear power." Casanova is alive and well and living in a villa in Majorca.

Spuduhates...

BBC2's Odyssey, starring Brookside's Anna Friel as a US special forces soldier.

Big Brother rapper Cristian's invisible DJ headphones. Plus the return of Dexter Koh, the most deluded housemate ever.

Murdered In Successville and Eurovision's semis potentially vanishing online with the TV axing of BBC3.

Love Island admitting defeat by bringing back Calum Best.

The Beeb ruining Wimbledon 2Day (awful, awful title) with Clare Balding, more chat than tennis, a Top Gear-esque crowd and tots' home videos.

Dr Ranj's hottest-day advice on This Morning: "Keep yourself cool by putting cold things on you."

BBC's Glastonbury grinning simpleton Gemma Cairney's village idiot routine.

And the Dalai Lama on the Pyramid Stage failing to adapt a Tom Jones classic. Altogether now... My, my, myyyyy Dalai Lama...