I have always thought that Eamonn Holmes makes much more sense if you imagine him and his career as part of a murder-mystery television drama in which he is unmasked as the culprit in the third act. All the things that are so unsettling about him – the cold, glinting eyes in the cuddly frame, the oddly aggressive “jokes”, the sense of malevolence always threatening to break through that strenuous geniality – would then make sense. It is a long-term, tour de force performance that makes Jodie Comer in Killing Eve look like Noele Gordon in Crossroads.

None of this was laid to rest by the documentary How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep (Channel 5), presented by Holmes and his – it is taking every ounce of strength not to preface this with “long-suffering” – wife and This Morning co-host, Ruth Langsford.

Both parties have sleeping disorders. Holmes rarely gets more than three consecutive hours’ shuteye and Ruth snores, which is the cue for much humour-adjacent commentary from her beloved. “Do they have duct tape?” he asks as she researches anti-snoring chinstraps on the web. She greets his every utterance with peals of laughter. It is mentioned elsewhere in the programme that Ruth drinks a lot of wine.

The programme is bewildering tosh from end to side. The first quarter is taken up by Holmes scoffing at the price of the beds recommended by “bed guru” Brent Cooper. The average person, you see, spends about £450 on theirs. Brent prefers anything up to £110,000. Eamonn and Ruth try out a £28,000 ordinary bed and then a £42,000 one with hydraulics to shift them into exactly the right position. (Viewers at home are advised that they can buy a mattress topper for £200.) By the first ad break, it is clear that anyone with a problem sleeping should just watch 15 minutes of How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep.

But we have angered God and there are 45 minutes left and no power cut delivers us from it, so on we go. Through the mishmash of meaningless and/or doubtful statistics and unprovable assertions (“Replacing an uncomfortable mattress can give you an average of 42 minutes’ extra sleep!” “Britain is on the verge of a sleep deprivation epidemic!” “You will get sicker quicker without sleep than without food!”). Through the mandatory collection of esoteric experts who stretch the bounds of patience and credulity. There’s the bed guru, of course. Then the “only dental sleep practitioner in the country!” at a Harley Street sleep clinic who bodyscans Ruth with a computer to determine that her posture is causing “upper airway resistance”. On we plough, through the equally compulsory handful of ordinary people dragooned into joining Ruth and Eamonn on their journey towards the arms of Morpheus. The comedy is provided by Jenny Chapman – “Britain’s loudest snorer!” and the noise pollution expert with the recording devices is deployed to prove it – and the tragedy by a young woman who has had chronic insomnia since she was widowed in 2016. She is shown sifting through a memory box alongside one of their two little children. “I don’t think I’ve grieved yet,” she says. “I identify with you,” booms Eamonn later. “Because you’re an overthinker.” Ruth has her professional smile fixed on at this point. I begin to feel as if I need a bit of a lie down myself.

It’s all quite stultifying. At one point, we are shown Jenny – a woman already well aware of the loudness of her snoring over the past 20 years – being shown the evidence of her snoring levels that we have already been shown. In the end, everyone gets a bit better, either through bunging airway reinforcers up their noses or by following guidelines from a sleep clinic. You may not have been entertained, but you have not been informed either.

How stuff this bad continued to get made in 2018 will be a question to vex TV historians down the ages. Possibly they will find the answers in the contractual archives locked in the breakfast television bunkers (“Ah, look: clause here that says three of a presenter’s passing thoughts – be they only of the most glancingly casual acquaintanceship with return on financial investment – must be put into production per annum”), or possibly they will simply see it as proof of the eternality of the nearly Barnum adage that no one ever went broke underestimating the public’s appetite for crap. Sleep well, if so, after a very full meal.