Game of Wool: Britain's Best Knitter (Channel 4) 

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Have you knitted yourself an emotional support chicken yet? Apparently, in the homespun world of crafting, it's a bit of a craze.

Since shop-owner Annette Corsino, who runs a knitting shop in Los Angeles, posted a 75-minute YouTube tutorial two years ago, nearly 400,000 people have tuned in for tips.

The colourful woolly birds are about the size of a cushion, ideal for hugging, and have tweely punning names such as Hennifer Lopez and Lindsey Lo-hen.

I'd never heard of that, which goes to show how out of touch I am. Channel 4 chiefs are much more aware, commissioning a new contest called Game Of Wool to find Britain's Best Knitter.

Produced with all the panache and drama of The Great British Bake Off, and aimed at the five million-strong audience that watches BBC1's The Great British Sewing Bee, the format is an obvious, instant hit.

It started with ten contestants, enough to supply a variety of lively characters without overwhelming us. One will be eliminated, or 'cast off', each week.

There are just two challenges per episode, with plenty of focus on technical terms — duplicate stitching, ladderback and the like. The setting is a canny one: not a marquee nor a disused mill, but a barn in the Scottish Highlands.

And the producers have picked the right presenter in Olympic diver and knitwear enthusiast Tom Daley. In an ivory-white skirt with gold buttons, he was more flamboyantly attired than during his brief stint on The Celebrity Traitors.

He wasn't saying whether he crocheted his multi-coloured poncho himself — but whoever made it clearly didn't know how to finish the sleeves. They were trailing on the floor.

The first knitter to be knocked out, cruise ship singer Gordon, had an uncompromising approach to sleeves. He simply took a pair of scissors to the garment, a technique called 'steeking', though it could more accurately be described as 'ruining'.

Poor Gordon's Fair Isle tank top had to be held together with safety pins as judges Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell inspected it. Another competitor's effort wasn't much better — Tom tried it on and couldn't get his head through the hole.

Both efforts clearly needed more time. So did the sofa covers in the second round. Split into two teams, one group went for a baggy cable-knit throw that looked like it had stretched in the wash, and the others didn't manage to get theirs finished, leaving great holes.

Even so, they had 12 hours for the tank tops, and 10 hours for the covers. Tom admitted that two or three full days would be needed to do a proper job.

That's the format's weakness. The knitters were so rushed they couldn't stop for banter. And it's obvious we're seeing only the briefest of edited highlights.

Do those all-day knitting marathons include a lunch break? I hope so. But no chicken on the menu, please.