The Great British Sewing Bee: Thimbles at the ready, folks...stitchers and sewers are capturing the hearts of a nation

It goes without saying that the Great British Sewing Bee is an unalloyed delight, a beautifully cast contest in which a subtly diverse and possibly unrepresentative subsection of the British public engage in a meaningless competition for the benefit of others.

It displays manners and a carefully rationed quotient of character to produce a television programme that is full of choreographed moments of gentle jeopardy which must be negotiated with the application of football-manager psychology, in which winning — while important — is less vital than giving your all, doing yourself justice, taking part, and remembering this day for the rest of your life.

All of the above are evident and true. But what is The Great British Sewing Bee? To understand that you have to unpick the seams.

The important thing here is “Great British”. We will assume, for the purposes of flippancy, that “great” refers not to the union of the crowns or the sense of the larger British Isles but to the unspoken and half-mythical fabulousness of our fading demi-paradise.

It is a greatness which is always tantalisingly out of reach but which brings with it a whiff of Dunkirk, old maids cycling to evensong and home-made marmalade.

There is soft nationalism beneath this tea-towel Albion, and it can harden into something that is unpalatable if refrigerated or exposed to reality. But in general it soothes more than it irritates, especially if you take care to remove the mouldy deposits from the surface before ingesting.

Prior to the Sewing Bee there was Bake Off, a Great British contest in which the format’s debt to our inner Women’s Institute was made obvious by the setting: a big tent in the grounds of the big house on a manicured summer lawn.

But the Sewing Bee is not the Bake Off, because sewing is not quite as sensual as baking, and assembling a hoodie is always going to be less of a temptation than the moist refuge of a well-risen sponge.

But this is a sturdy format, and it can stand a bit of tinkering. The judges in the sew-off are less forceful than their Bake Off equivalents. Soft cop Patrick Grant is a Savile Row tailor, and retains an air of respectable anonymity. Hard cop Esme Young is a little bit tougher but she hasn’t quite relaxed into a cartoon version of herself, despite her striking appearance.

And then there is the host. The nation’s favourite, Claudia Winkleman, has been replaced by Joe Lycett, a camp commandant with no obvious interest in sewing but a reliable line in saucy banter. “I like a hoodie,” he says. “Just the sort of thing I could wear when I go to the shopping centre with the rough boys.” Lycett is a natural at this kind of nonsense, quick with a fairy quip, and he shows himself to be a dab hand at stitching himself up.

Finally, the contestants. They are a less fearful bunch than the bakers, less insular than the potters on the (now axed) Great Pottery Throw Down (which was doomed the moment it forgot to mention its Britishness in the title).

The sewers talk back, they have fun. They seem nice and agreeably diverse, like a tolerant person’s idea of a great evening class, if not a great country.