Want to understand the difference between America and Britain? Compare Project Runway and The Great British Sewing Bee. America’s Project Runway pits 16 designers (all gay) against each other in an outlandish, outrageous battle of the hemline. It’s hosted by the German supermodel Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, a fashion consultant who weighs up the quality of each dress like a stormtrooper choosing who will live and who will die. There are tears. There are tantrums. It’s a gay Gladiators, if that wasn’t gay enough already. Then there’s BBC Two’s Sewing Bee (Monday, 9pm). It’s literally about sewing. And that’s it. Seven women and three men just ... sew for an hour. Someone wins, someone loses – and when the results are read out even the contestants appear unmoved. A woman who lost just sort of shrugged. “Well, it is only sewing,” she seemed to say. “Hardly life and death.” There’s no tension, little character. Presenter Claudia Winkleman tries to stir things up with incessant, inconsequential banter that goes nowhere – but what does she expect an amateur sewer to say to her? That they masterminded 9/11? Runway seethes with sexual politics, but Sewing Bee actually manages to give the impression that the design industry isn’t very gay-friendly. One of the male contestants might’ve been gay; another was a house husband, which is effeminate but not very gay, and the other made T-shirts, which is not a particularly gay thing to do nowadays. Honestly, there are more gay people on Songs of Praise. Project Runway understands that a minority pursuit isn’t interesting unless you throw in some melodrama. No one is ejected on that show: they flounce off. By contrast, Sewing Bee expects us to genuinely care that a sleeve is ragged or a button askew. But maybe some viewers do care. Bake Off was also a huge hit despite being, from what I could make out, an hour of people baking cakes. What next: the Great British Creosoting Challenge? Twelve people creosote a fence, judged by Graham Norton on a space hopper? It would be more satisfying camp than this boring waste of an hour.