OPENING line from C5’s latest hatchet job on the unemployed: “Benefits. Britain is Obsessed.”

An inopportune moment, then, to have taken a slurp of coffee, which went a-spluttering.

This from the channel that brought us The Big Benefits Row Live, The Great Big Benefits Wedding Live, My Big Benefits Family, Celebs on Benefits: Fame to Claim, Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole, Benefits: The Millionaire Shoplifter and Benefits: Can’t Work, Won’t Work.

To name but a few.

Yes, C5. Clearly WE’RE the ones obsessed.

And now, on top of this pile, they proudly present The Great British Benefits Handout.

Three jobless families given £26,000 cash, the government’s maximum annual limit, in exchange for signing off and trying to change their lives.

Which has so far included blowing £460 on a raccoon and £350 on a PlayStation 4.

It’s a “UK first experiment which has worked in other countries”, so they’ve hired three experts to oversee it, including a psychologist and a professor.

Because otherwise we might just see through the smokescreen at the real, bear-baiting intention here — to ridicule these people and generate vitriol.

Otherwise they wouldn’t have let them off the leash without a word of business or financial advice.

It’s a cynical exercise too, as some of C5’s previous targets are genuinely scroungers.

Here, though, we have single mum Rachel who quit college when she fell pregnant 15 years ago and hasn’t worked since, married dad-of-four Scott, forced to give up his electrician’s job to care for a son with learning difficulties, and aspirational Tony, the ghost of Ted Bovis, who’s already the breakout star.

Day two, after a shopping trip: “It was nice to buy a Lynx (deodorant) for once. I bought Diane a couple of Doves and she smells lovely this morning.”

He plans to open a second-hand shop, but don’t think for a moment just because he has zero experience that he doesn’t know what he’s doing: “We haven’t gone into this blindfolded.

“We watch Bargain Hunt, Things To Sell in the Attic, we’ve been watching for the last ten years.”

Yes, Things To Sell in the Attic. One of my favourites. Though there is, admittedly, little passing trade if you’re trying to sell things in the attic.

Scott, meanwhile, reckons he’s “the kind of person that would turn a dollar into a million”, although he seems more likely to turn £26,000 into a dollar, having dived headfirst into his kids’ party business idea with that raccoon.

He’s not stopping there, though: “I could do with some giant millipedes, giant snails, Madagascan cockroaches, 12ft snakes, 6ft lizards, a nice iguana, maybe a skunk or a coati…”

Wife Leanne: “I just don’t see how anyone is going to go, ‘I know, let’s invite a raccoon to my birthday party’.”

Scott: “Well you invite Peppa Pig.”

Man’s got a point. That said, you have to question his choice of theme for his parties’ centrepiece, a giant bouncy slide, which only became clear when it was inflating — the Titanic.

Good luck with that.

We haven’t seen much of Rachel yet, but on seeing the £26,000 cash, daughter Annie asked: “Ooh! Can we buy a giraffe?”

Don’t, Annie. You’ll give Scott ideas.

Spudulikes…

BBC1 thriller Happy Valley.

The delicately handled How To Die: Simon’s Choice.

C4’s excellent Royal Navy School.

War & Peace’s finale.

The look on Tupele Dorgu’s face as she wondered how she went from playing Kelly Crabtree in Corrie to squeezing lube onto a vet’s gloved arm, to shove up a buffalo’s rear end, on Sugar Free Farm.

The One Show asking Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul: “Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized Walter Whites or one Walter White-sized chicken?” (Only on The One Show.) And 10,000BC dimwit Jay taking an urgent phone call from his girlfriend who gave birth unaware she was even pregnant: “You’ve got a son!” Jay: “What? Well who’s the mum?” The next generation is in safe hands.

Spuduhates…

Ant & Dec’s soul-sacrificing I’m A Celebrity… Get Out Of Me Ear! ads for Suzuki.

Broken bones and dislocations sucking any remaining sense of fun out of The Jump.

Patrick Kielty’s Mulholland Drive, a “documentary about William Mulholland, responsible for LA’s water infrastructure”. (Monkey Tennis!) Phone Shop Idol turning full-blown X Factor with the contestant’s words: “Me nana’s passed away.”

ITV letting Towie’s Arg jet off to Spain in the middle of Sugar Free Farm to film The Only Way Is Marbs and eat a Burger King.

And The X Files shambles, with Tad O’Malley asking Scully: “Did you miss it all? The X Files?” Not once, Tad, but thanks for asking.