We’ve been hard on Switch recently, but it appears Episode 5 has had a ‘slight improvement’ spell cast upon it.

Actually, it’s not magic, it’s just a solid coherent story, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Episode 1. There’s a worry about relationships – an inability to synchronise them with the rest of life – that holds the entire episode and its characters together, and it’s played out in four separate strands that occasionally bump into each other.

Etsy-crafted human Grace is dating metrosexual man-mop Gerry, but he’s cool and she’s a quivering tea cosy of a human being, so she’s worried that he’ll leave her. She prevaricates and whimpers like a child worrying about whether or not Santa will bring them that bike they asked for, even though they’ve been reeeeally good this year, until a spell is cast to put her and us out of our misery. Enchanted to tell only the truth, Gerry professes his adoration for Grace, Liar Liar stye. It’s all so devilishly sweet, it’s like watching two sock puppets fall in love.

Hannah teaches people skills to a girl called Tuppence, who appears to be the mortal spirit of Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple chained within a teenage shell, and has all the poshness and social skills of an Eton-educated Dalek. By now you know that Switch is preternaturally disposed to hate anyone remotely posh – treating them all as chinless, cocktailed Cameron clones who view the world through the lens of a champagne flute and then give a horsey snort – and it’s barely different with poor Tuppence.

Meanwhile Jude tries to start a relationship from a casual shag, played by Kevin Bishop, who’s still trying to shrug off the pop culture memory of serenading several ounces of hand-controlled felt atop some rigging in Muppet Treasure Island. This isn’t the role that’s going to do it. His character Mike is a crudely drawn caricature of bizarre mood swings. You can see what the writers are trying to achieve but it doesn’t gel together, and we’re left with not so much a character as a series of noises.

Where’s Stella while all this is happening? She ends up on a blind date with her boss, which isn’t as high-larious as it should be, and has a ‘Get out of jail free’ card up its sleeve which brings the whole plot to a close in time for bed, just when you hope that it’s going to get saucy and emotionally complicated. Switch doesn’t do complicated though; it never gives enough depth to drown our witches in anything more than mild aggravations.

After five episodes we’ve come to accept that. Switch is candy floss for the brain. The blue pill that lets you live in a blissful parallel universe of cocktails and hugs for an hour. That’s fine, there’s always space for this kind of thing, as long as it’s done well. Switch has only just started to get it right. But isn’t it a bit late now?

Aired at 10pm on Monday 12 November 2012 on ITV2.

> Order Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.

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