Is it me, or has the BBC's Click technology programme gone completely off the rails while I wasn't looking?

I haven't seen the programme for some time and happened to switch on News 24 this morning just before it began, and stayed to watch.

Originally Click Online, the show expanded its brief a year or two ago and began to cover more than its original review of on-line content and developments, going on to include smart home technology, home entertainment and gaming. Nothing wrong with that: I've been interviewed by them more than once, and traditionally found their coverage accessible, fairly accurate (though never accurate enough for a pedant like me), and interesting.

Something has evidently happened while I was away. Today's show was presented from the floor of some club or other that appeared to have no connection with any of the items, and the main presenter and other contributors offered a irritating "gee-whizz" style of overacted presentation that made you think the show was made with young kids of below average intelligence in mind (in which case the content would have had little relevance).

The actual topics - including, on this occasion, free anti-virus software, the Nintendo Wii console, and smart apartments in South Korea - were all good choices of material, but all suffered from an overt-ebullient, jocular approach that left rather too little room for useful information in amongst the affected jokey asides. Least affected out of those already mentioned was the smart homes piece.

In fact the only part of the show I used to enjoy that still seems to exist was Kate Russell's excellent Webscape, a brief review full of interesting sites worth looking at for one kind of person or another - not all of them offering something I want, but you can see all the choices will appeal to somebody .

Looking deeper into what is actually going on, I visited the Click web presence, where the show is sadly labelled "The BBC's flagship technology programme" - shades of Tomorrow's World here: a great programme that suddenly took a dive and never resurfaced. Here you'll find writeups of all the segments in the show - and not only that, the articles appear to be the actual scripts. Read them and you'll find they're quite sensible, if a touch patronising.

Unlike Tomorrow's World after producer Martin Mortimore parted company with it, then, it isn't the whole show that's gone to the dogs: it's just the OTT-ad-lib style of presentation that makes it feel that way.

I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.