To Scotland first, and drama featuring Duncan and Macduff. Not the Scottish play, because Duncan isn’t king of anywhere or anything, yet. And Macduff is not Thane of Fife but a town in Aberdeenshire, where pale 16-year-old schoolboy Duncan lives. He goes to see a lady, who tears the hair from his legs and another who paints him brown. Why? Because this is Obsessed By My Body (Channel 4), and Duncan has his first bodybuilding competition coming up.

“Wait until I get to your bum cheeks,” cackles the waxing witch. “Look at the colour of that,” hoots the tanning witch, slapping dark gunge on to his now-smooth body. The colour is called Dark As – more like tarring than tanning. Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn … Jesus! What have you done to the poor lad?

It’s necessary with all the lights that are on stage, explains 15-year-old Cosmo’s dad. If you didn’t use fake tan, “you would see nothing, you wouldn’t see any shape, definition, nothing.” Trouble is, Duncan dribbled in the night, and now he’s got a little white line coming from the corner of his mouth; his head looks a bit like a split conker.

Boys and men now spend as much time as girls and women trying to look perfect, and they’re under the same pressures to do so, that’s what we’re talking about here. Not just teenage bodybuilding but preening and waxing, blowing and pouting. Like Junaid – who is a king, king of selfies – and whose routine doesn’t just include beauty treatments and eyebrow tattooing but also travelling first class on the train. Because he’s worth it, even if he can’t afford it.

I guess I need to get involved. Looking down, I’m not as godlike as I could be. England, ex-pecs, abs-less heavensent more absent, one barrel, and all coloured White As. I’m inspired, by Duncan and Cosmo and Junaid, I’m going to beef up, tan up, make like a crab and watch as my confidence rockets. I’ll probably inspire others too, by doing one of these transformational videos; I’ll point at the camera a lot and maybe I’ll change my name.

Back in Scotland, Duncan comes fourth in his first bodybuilding competition. Because another boy called Rudy has bigger muscles, and a more even tan (he does have the advantage of being black to start with, though this doesn’t stop him using fake tan too, interestingly). Duncan’s quest must continue – for power at any cost, with all the paranoias and insecurities that both lead to and come out of that … You know what? Maybe it’s not so different to Macbeth after all.

The Back In Time … strand, meanwhile, continues with Back in Time for the Weekend (BBC2). It started with Back in Time For Dinner remember, which was a clever title because it had two meanings. Plus it was both interesting and a good watch, mainly because of the excellent Robshaws, the time-travelling family taking part. Back in Time for Christmas and this are inferior titles, not having the crucial double-entendre element (will you be back in time for the weekend, darling … said no one, ever). And I’m a bit cross with the Ashby Hawkins family, for not being the Robshaws. Which is totally unfair on the AHs, who are also excellent – game, and funny about everything they have to do; all the DIY and laundry, Sunday school with Ann Widdecombe and ballroom dancing with Angel Rippon etc. I especially like Seth, who seems very wise and eloquent for a 12-year-old.

But maybe the whole Back in Time For … thing is being stretched a little thin. What next? Back in Time for the Holidays: pack the Ashby Hawkins off to Skeggy, then a Costa? Actually, that would probably work.

Shocking news in The Secret Life of the Zoo (Channel 4): meerkats aren’t the gorgeous little darlings you thought they were. Nice Chester zookeeper Kirsten even calls them “the dirt of the zoo world”, I think because they have a lot of babies (a bit judgmental of you isn’t it, Kirsten?) Plus they bite. In fact, such is Kirsten and her colleagues’ indifference to them, that the matriarch meerkat mum of so many babies hasn’t even been given a name; she’s just got a microchip. Time to rethink meerkats, maybe? And visit a new price comparison website?

A new elephant is given a name immediately: Nandita. She’s bristly and unsteady, and lovely. Of course she is, she’s a baby elephant.