The OC, Channel 4, Sunday;

How I Met Your Mother, BBC2, Sunday;

World Cup Stories, BBC2, Sunday.

Teen soaps sound like a reasonable idea on paper - combine youthful good looks with the trials of growing up and the drama virtually writes itself. But from Beverley Hills 90210 to Dawson’s Creek, the formula has always contained the seeds of its own destruction. Within a couple of series, your high school seniors are ready to graduate. You can try following them to college, but that original tight-knit community gets lost, signalling the beginning of the end. Advertisement: dating.scotsman.com 20% off

I thought that The OC had found away around this malfunction. Right from the start it had storylines about the (equally glamorous) parents running alongside those of the pretty young things. In one fell swoop this casts a wider net in audience terms and also helps us to ignore the fact that the teenagers are rapidly getting far too old to care about school rivalries.

Screened on a Sunday afternoon, The OC seems pitched at kids and those either nursing a hangover or struggling to think of something better to do. I used to catch it too regularly, loving the plots featuring scheming Julie and the actor forming known as Jim from Neighbours. But as for the teens, the never-changing set-up of Marissa being needy and Ryan getting into a punch-up every five minutes has grown dull. Seth and Summer have realised they are made for each other and settled into a boring routine. In short, the thrill is gone.

Apparently this has been reflected in the ratings, hence the decision to kill off one of the lead characters. Over in the US this has caused a flurry of excitement, causing people to start talking about The OC once more. We haven’t got to that episode yet and my lips are sealed as to who gets ’offed’, but on the basis of this stagnant episode, it’s going to take more than an Orange County funeral to get things rolling again.

How I Met Your Mother is another show that I stumble upon rather than set out to watch. It’s probably because it fills up the 25 minutes before The West Wing (when I’ve won the coin toss) or Top Gear (when his indoors has won). But this US sitcom is much more than a time-filler. It’s set around the premise of a Dad telling his kids about his dating adventures - something which I’m sure rarely happens, but it works nicely. Ted is the bloke on the lookout for true love, but messing it up every time. It’s sort of like Friends, but with slightly sharper edge to offset the cosiness.

Ted’s gang of friends include Alyson Hannigan of Buffy fame and Neil Patrick Harris, aka Doogie Howser, MD, and they’ve all got admirable comic timing. It reminds me of Cheers, with its effortless camaraderie which you know probably comes down to a huge team of scriptwriters. This week’s episode involved Ted realising that if you’re going to tell someone "you’re not the one", best not to do it on their birthday, unless you want to end up with a black eye.

Elsewhere, I was getting the feeling that a major sporting event might be imminent. I don’t know why, it’s just a strange sensation brought on having run slap bang into at least one football programme a week over the last month. I grudgingly settled down in front of World Cup Stories, expecting to be bored out of my non-sporting mind. Instead, this documentary about Argentina’s World Cup triumphs of 1978 and 1986 ventured beyond the pitch to investigate the politics of the era.

From the Falklands War to Maradona’s "Hand of God", it was well-researched stuff, if a little heavy-handed on the voiceover: Maradona’s debated goal in the 1986 quarter final was described as "the black arts of Argentinian football", while his subsequent goal apparently represented the "collective dream of all Argentinians". What impressed most were the skills of the Argentine players, running rings around their European opponents. Miraculously, it actually switched me on to the drama of the football pitch. Is it too late to get tickets to the World Cup?