British Style Genius, BBC2 The American Future: A History, BBC 2 John Adams, More4

The subject of episode one of British Style Genius was high-street shopping, a topic about which it is hard to be revelatory. We are all experts in this field. It did, however, include extremely rare, once-in-a-decade footage of Kate Moss talking. It's a bit like when a birdwatcher finally hears the Resplendent Quetzal sing: inevitably there's an anticlimax. You expect a certain hauteur, but she's squeaky and girlish, and, rather touchingly, desperately flirtatious – as if she had nothing to get by on but her charm.

The show's other point of interest was an interview with Sir Philip Green, Mr Topshop, who, it turns out, speaks entirely in song lyrics. Who knew? I have taken the liberty of inserting some line breaks, but otherwise, everything else is his. "We've bought the ticket/ We're in the race/ We're gonna build the building/ And we're gonna roll the dice/ And it's gonna be: (chorus) 24/7 Getting it right/ We're not gonna dilute it./We're gonna wheel that building into New York!"

He is describing the imminent opening of a transatlantic Topshop, but as a timeless American anthem, Dolly Parton could do a lot worse.

And so we come to Simon Schama's estimable new series, The American Future: A History, intended as a thoughtful accompaniment to the American election hullabaloo, the virtuous historical vegetables to the high-fat low-content electioneering pie. I like the clever title, but paradox is a dangerous drug and Schama seemed to have picked up a habit: "America has run out of infinity," he tells us. "The land of plenty is running dry." Later: "This is a story of paradise ... lost." It might have been more useful, in this episode about America's water consumption relative to its availability, to have had a few more humble facts, packed in fast.

Instead the keynote was magnificence. With Schama, it usually is. His programmes ring with poetry, and here, on a portentous topic such as American natural resources, he was in his element. Photogenically it excelled. The storm clouds over the Grand Canyon feel like they are still rumbling over my retina even now – well, up to the bit where it panned sideways and showed Schama, hair ruffled by the breeze. The shot of a vast reservoir, half-drained and ringed, like a bath, with low water marks, was the word "ominous" defined in landscape. It wasn't all bad news: the account of how Las Vegas has recently adapted to maximise its low water supply was heartening. So was the conclusion that both the presidential candidates in this election are broadly conservationist. But it was the small cracks in the earth that stuck in your mind, like the words of the Midwestern farmer: "We used to git a lot of rain, but the weather pattern changed," she said matter-of-factly. "It quit raining on us."

Another election-friendly piece of broadcasting is John Adams (More 4), an excellent dramatised life of the second president. An import from HBO, it is American history as she tells it herself – up to a point: the director is our own Tom Hooper, one of the most talented young TV directors around (Longford was his, and Elizabeth, starring Helen Mirren). It is an extremely substantial piece of work, as satisfying as drama series used to be in this country in the 1970s. Each episode lasts an hour and a half. Scenes go on, and then go on some more. Politicians deliver speeches, instead of soundbites. It is all absolutely absorbing, big enough to lose yourself in.

The relationship between Paul Giamatti, as Adams, and Laura Linney, as his wife Abigail, is very well done, particularly the intimacy of their wigless hours, where they are equals. Wigged up and out in public, she is a good deal more respectful. There is a true sense of period to her dignified performance. Tom Wilkinson is wonderfully at ease as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington (David Morse) actually looks as if he walked off a dollar bill, and Giamatti is a strong lead as the lawyer-turned-president, even though, with his rolling eyes, rounded contours and frequently puzzled expression, he does occasionally remind me of that other great American male, Homer Simpson.