It only takes a few attractive people in hard hats and fleeces to turn an engaging documentary into a trashy disaster movie

If . . . the Oil Runs Out (BBC2) we'll all be walking to work, wearing warm clothes indoors to save on heating bills and avoiding petrol stations because they're vile, dangerous places. So what's new? The doomsday scenario painted in such gloomy terms in last night's alarmist docudrama has already been adopted by choice in this household. The only really worrying fact was that DVDs are made out of oil, apparently, so we'll have to find a different way of reviewing alarmist BBC2 docudramas.

"It's 2016," announced the voiceover, "and the world is plunged into crisis." I'm pretty sure that I saw similar auguries of the end-time back in 1996, but, apart from the odd war, we're still jogging along. In this nightmare, China and India had started guzzling oil at the same greedy rate as the rest of us, Saudi Arabia had turned off the taps, and life was quickly reverting to the basic caveman plan. There were plenty of experts to tell us how and why this would inevitably happen, but as they weren't devastatingly good-looking we had to have some actors with tousled hair and designer stubble as well.

Thus a nifty, chilling, half-hour documentary was turned into a perplexing 60 minutes by the addition of attractive people in hard hats and fleeces who had tears in their eyes. The effect was rather like channel surfing between the Open University and a trashy Hollywood eco-disaster movie, without the effort of actually changing channels, which might save a battery or two.

Jess and Nick were the tousled, stubbly couple who lived in a gorgeous London apartment and longed for children. She just happened to be a hotshot oil expert as well, and zipped off to Alaska in search of black gold. He stayed at home (it's 2016, so naturally he would) and was nice to poor people, while she kicked ass in the butch world of wildcat drilling. Then she discovered she was pregnant, and came home to give birth to a symbolic new generation. Meanwhile, the world was plunged into chaos, and her father (who had the thankless task of symbolising the old oil-guzzling world order) was beaten to an impotent pulp.

Hybrids like this are seldom successful, because they do neither job terribly well. Of the two halves, the factual was by far the better, and raised all the right questions while suggesting that, if we pull our socks up, there might yet be some answers. But the drama, far from ramming the points home, seemed to blur the focus. Nothing so very bad happened in 2016. Daddy got assaulted at the petrol pump, but quite frankly he asked for it because he was extremely rude to a fellow motorist. Jess and Nick spent a lot of time being tousled and stubbly and ended up with a lovely little baby. Far from the "bleak and brutal" Armageddon we were promised, this was quite a nice future in which we might learn a few lessons about the value of good manners.

You want bleak and brutal? Look no further than EastEnders (BBC1), where Sonia and Naomi were entering the sulking and screaming stage of their doomed affair. Sonia was bleak ("You fall in love. You get hurt") and Naomi was brutal: last night she threw Sonia's belongings out of the window in a black binbag, which never bodes well. In recent weeks, their rows have become so frequent that you could set your watch by their rapprochements. Naomi, unlike her biblical namesake, is easily won over by a glass of white wine and a flash of décolleté sleepwear. But things have gone too far now, at least I hope they have. Homeless Sonia hit a low point, begging for a bed for the night and brawling with Pauline in the Vic ("You miserable old boot!"). They were separated before they came to blows; we must be patient.

I welcome Sonia's anguish - not because I wish her ill, but simply because it does a fine job of demystifying same-sex relationships for the viewing millions. For every frisson afforded by their kissing and touching, there are at least two moments of humdrum misery and gloom.

EastEnders does not have a particularly glowing record in the LGBT department, but this latest effort is much the best to date. There are shortcomings, of course, such as Sonia's complete lack of self-questioning in her adolescence; she "went lesbian" like other people catch a cold. And I do wonder why all lesbian relationships inWalford have to be mixed-race (vide Della and Binnie). But Sonia and Naomi have been allowed the full run of the Square, as it were, tasting the rare highs and frequent lows that dog their heterosexual neighbours. Equality of misery is still equality.