Last night's television - All Over the Shop, BBC2; Miss Naked Beauty, Channel 4

"Which do you prefer – fake or natural?" asked Gok Wan at the beginning of Miss Naked Beauty. Since you're asking, Gok, I think what I'd prefer is really, really good fake. Tasteful, you know, so that it's only distinguishable from natural by the fact that it looks a bit better. This, incidentally, is not only the wrong answer to Gok's question, it is a wicked answer too, because Miss Naked Beauty is on a mission to the benighted, a series expressly intended to take on commercially sponsored notions of orthodox beauty and "say no to beauty fascism". That it does this with a kind of Nuremberg rally of empty self-affirmation, in which various young women spout the "we're-all-beautiful" party-line, may strike some viewers as a paradox. But I imagine that Gok's devoted fans won't notice. For myself, I couldn't help but feel an unexpected surge of sympathy for the defiantly unnatural Joan Rivers. Vox-popped by Gok in a London street and asked whether she supported his search for an unadulterated beauty ambassador, she was unequivocal: "No, no, no! I wanna see good-looking people and pretend that's me."

The idea is simple. Gok and his judges – Kathryn Flett, Mica Paris and James Brown – will conduct a beauty-pageant competition to find a spokeswoman for their "natural-beauty revolution". The lucky winner scores a modelling contract and a regular slot on telly to investigate the beauty industry. What they want to do is replace that callow dualism "hot or not" with a more pluralistic notion of feminine attractiveness, one that expands the limited template for pulchritude and, let's be frank, offers new hope to the tepid. They began their search by making 200 contestants totter down Blackpool pier in their bikinis, only subsequently revealing that it wasn't a conventional glamour model look they were after. When Flett declared that she thought it was "important that we peel the layers from these girls and find the beauty that lies beneath", she was talking about personality, not the swimsuit section.

Quite how they decided who should get through to the next round wasn't clear, though it's obvious that the series as a whole has a powerful interest in retaining the unorthodox and unconventional alongside the girl-next-door types, so that the rhetoric of self-celebration can appear more boldly admirable. Having someone who looks like Anne Hathaway say how they love their body and are at ease with how they look wouldn't really count for a great deal, but it's more likely to be inspirational if it comes from a woman like Katy, who has a beer-keg figure and three large diamonds tattooed on to her chest. Katy, you won't be surprised to know, made it through the first cut, which involved maintaining the heroic can-do attitude even after having the make-up blasted from your face with a fire hose. But, however attractive her self-confidence, I couldn't help but wonder why it should be deemed "natural", rather than just a different kind of veneer. And, not to be picky, but wouldn't Myleene Klass's heartfelt speeches about the liberation of dispensing with the armour of slap be a little more convincing if she didn't look throughout as if the make-up girl had only just cleared shot?

All Over the Shop, is basically Mary Queen of Shops without the frocks. A retail expert called Geoff Burch ("business is my business") visits ailing retailers and introduces them to the bleeding obvious, a category of facts they appear to have no ability to get in touch with without outside assistance. Take Peter, for example, who runs a toyshop/coffeeshop in Cardiff. "I haven't got a clue about marketing," Peter said genially. "The only thing I can think of is that next time Wales play at Millenium Stadium I'll strip off and run across the pitch and write 'Follow me to Rainbow' right across my arse." This unusual poster site would at least have the advantage of being bigger than Peter's shop sign. The woman who ran the Albany pet shop wasn't doing much better either, her keen mercantile instincts having slightly backfired. "I tend to get a kick out of saving money for other people, rather than making it for myself," she explained.

Burch, who needs to have his hands tied to his ankles at once, to stop him beating time to his own script, tells them to buck their ideas up and then they do, with a neatness and lack of difficulty that comes across as distinctly suspicious. And, as in Miss Naked Beauty, there's a sense that the instinct to affirmation and confidence- boosting occasionally involves statements that wouldn't fare well if the Trade Descriptions Act was applicable. "Maybe I lit the fuse, but you're the stick of dynamite that made it work," said Burch to a wedding boutique owner who was about as explosively entrepreneurial as a digestive biscuit. Mary has nothing to fear from the royal pretender.