[Wednesday, 01st] On Deep Space 9 [Till Death Do Us Part, 18:45, BBC 2], Cisco's wedding was off, the Kai of Bajor was seeing prophets and Ezri Dax and Worf were still prisoners on a Breen spaceship. Also, Gol Ducat, disguised as a Bajoran, was up to something with the Kai. Meanwhile, the Breen were zapping their prisoners with tasers and then interrogating them. And Worf found out that Ezri really fancies Dr. Bashir. In the end, the Dominon and the Breen proved to be new allies and Worf and Ezri were handed over as prezzies.

[Thursday, 02nd] Lex Luthor's ex-wife is crazy. She must be. She had a doctor creating a replacement Lois Lane on Superman [Madame Ex, 18:00, BBC 2]. Then she paid off the doctor with a bullet! Which was a fairly bright move. The Man of Sup was back saving people but the jabronis in Metropolis were no longer enchanted with him - well, 20% of them, anyway, and Lois was dressed up like Mortitia Addams.
   The ex-Mrs. Lex was using the fake Lois Lane to embarrass the real one, who was struggling with faxes and email on her PC. And the ex also had Lex's body. The bogus Lois managed to fill the whole of the Daily Planet building with tear gas from one small cannister before getting into a confrontation with the real Lois. The ex turned up to grab Lois, intending to frame her for shooting the Man of Sup with a Kryptonite bullet. But Lois was up to the job of doing some emergency surgery to extract it and the bad guys ended up behind bars, as usual, leaving Lex's body in the sole charge of some mad female doctor. I assume she's mad because the rest of the females in the series, apart from Superman's Mum, are all seriously crazy.
   Sunnydale High had an invisible presence running around, bashing people with baseball bats and knocking others down stairs. [Out of mind, out of sight,18:45, BBC 2]. Angel had a chat with Giles about the Vampire King, alias The Master, because he wanted to help Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Buffy discovered that the invisible one was a female pupil, who had become invisible because no one noticed her. Giles reckoned it was all to do with quantum mechanics - Heisenberg's Invisibility Principle, of course!
   Anyway, the invisible one decided that it would be a good idea to perform surgery on Cordelia to ugly her up a bit. Meanwhile, Angel saved Giles, Willow and Zander from a gas-filled basement. Buffy then used her Zen-Slayer training to defeat the invisible one and the CIA, or some other nameless government agency, strolled off with the invisible one to turn her into a government-controlled assassin as part of a group of similar ignored kids.
   Ancient Apocalypse [21:00, BBC 2] had a geologist looking for the cause of the collapse of the Minoan civilization 3,500 years ago. Any Minoans on Thera were wiped out by the massive volcanic explosion, which blew the heart out of the island. Crete, 100 miles to the south, was battered by a tsunami - as demonstrated by the remains of deep-water marine shellfish being found inland. Boats and warehouses were demolished by waves of height ranging from 3 to 12 metres and the salt-water floods polluted the farmlands with salt.
   Thera was the main focus of trade for the Minoan empire and its loss was devastating - but the civilization lingered on for 50 years after the volcano blew. The geologist offered the theory that the explosion had been twice as powerful as estimated previously and that it had cause devastating climate changes - such as cool, wet summers and crippled harvests.
   His evidence included Irish tree-ring data, which goes back 7,000 years and shows evidence of a decade of zero summer growth 3,500 years ago and samples from the Greenland ice sheet from the same period and containing sulphuric acid of volcanic origin and ash from the Thera eruption. The geologists conclusion was the the explosion and the subsequent deterioration in their climate made the people lose faith in Nature and their leaders and sent them into a decline, which ended when they were conquered by mainland Greeks, 50 years after the Thera blew.

[Friday, 03rd] The Bill [Another Country, 21:00, ITV] began with little vandals bunking off school and introduced a stroppy Geordie, who used to be a TV copper as a younger self. Jim Carver was the man on the spot. The binmen found the body of the Geordie's best mate and his flat looked burgled. So the Geordie set a trap and caught the teenage burglers. And were the police pleased? Like hell!
   It turned out that the dead man was a Korean War veteran suffering from post traumatic shock disorder brought on by meeting a former corporal, who had turned both him and the Geordie into murderers. The ex-corporal was a big wheel in the Korean veterans association but the Geordie, with Jim's encouragement, turned up at the grand reunion to expose him.
   Raw is War [22:00, Sky Sports 1] began with a recap of 'Will The Rock rejoin the WWF?' In the ring, Tazz tried to deliver a harangue after Paul E. Jabroni was reinstated at the announcers' table but Y2J turned up to tell him to 'Shut the hell up!' And then leap into the ring and zap the thug in less than one minute. After some quite entertaining Theatre of Vince, Rob Van Dam had quite a long, hard-fought battle with Tajiri and retained his WWF Hardcore title.
   After a rehash of Kurt Angle's WCW title victory and a false alarm over The Rock's return, Matt Hardy and Lita took on Hurricane Helms and Torrie Wilson. It was a very clumsy match with the ref doing a hell of a lot of wrestling with Lita so that he could turn his back on what was happening to Matt. Kurt Angle's rematch with Booker T featured a pre-match brawl and Shane sticking his nose in. Then we got Stevo doing a run-in and the crudest of swindles, even by the WWF's low standards.
   Edge & Christian versus Chris Kanyon and Lance Storm contained lots of action and it ended with another swindle. Kidman versus X-Pac Sucks [well, that's what the fans call him] ended with an X-Factor and X-Pac adding the WCW Cruiserweight belt to his WWF Lightweight champion. The Dudleys took on the Brothers of Destruction in a table match - with a WCW ref, who moved the table out of the way as the Undertaker was about to put D-Von through it! Mrs. Taker nearly went through a table, but she was rescued at the last minute and Bubbah was wooded at the end.
   And then Rocky arrived. Hooray! And soon, he was in the ring wearing what looked like a designer donkey jacket. Which probably cost several thousand dollars. So we got invitations to rejoin the WWF and join the Alliance instead. The Rock replied with a Rock Bottom for Vince, then another for Shane, and a People's Elbow for Shane. After his declaration of 'A plague on both your houses' the Great One announced that, 'Finally, The Rock has come back to ... the WWF!' So all is well in the world. Until Smackdown!, that is.

[Saturday, 04th] The striking thing about the Omnibus Special on Douglas Adams - The Man Who Blew Up The Earth [20:10, BBC 2] - was the number of still pictures of the man himself. We had lots of video clips of people being nice about him while Mr. Adams just delivered frozen looks, apart from saying the same things on 2 different TV shows. Douglas Adams was clearly a man of the writen and spoken word but he had not done all that much in front of the cameras.
   As I watched the programme, I was reminded of Joseph Heller. Douglas Adams had written a blockbuster - his equivalent of Catch 22 - and that was his contribution done. He was destined to go from the radio series to a sequence of books, a TV series and then The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Movie! Only he never quite made the last step because time ran out for him.
   Smackdown! was almost shown on Sunday this week [23:45, Sky Sports 1]. The Rock Returns rehash was followed by an Olympic harangue, Kurt Angle going all American patriotic and Canadian Lance Storm zapping him. The Hardys had a WWF ref for their match with WCW's O'Haire and Palumbo. The ref broke up a WCW illegal move (sensation!) but he got into a wrestling match with Matt Hardy to avoid seeing what was happening to Jeff. Backstage, Y2J, Edge & Christian razzed up Stephie and we got contributions from Stevo and DDP, too.
   Back in the ring, WCW US champion Kanyon versus Kane was bound to end in a swindle. So the WCW ref disqualified Kanyon so that he could keep his belt - and was choke-slammed by Kane for his trouble! Then The Rock delivered his harangue and a challenge to Stevo - but he got Booker T instead for a microphonic duel. Then Shane came out to challenge The Rock to a Street Fight on Raw.
   Back in the ring, the Dudleys and Rhyno took on Edge, Christian and Chris Jericho. Bubbah got a Wazzup! head-but from D-Von when Y2J and Edge made it all go horribly wrong. then the WWF ref managed to keep his back turned long enough to let a swindle go off. Then we had Mr. and Mrs. Stevo wasting some more time with a harangue. This was obviously a scriptwriters' rather than a wrestlers' night. We got back towards entertainment when Debra bashed Stevo with a big, metal cookie dish. But it didn't stop Stevo from carrying on being tedious.
   Lance Storm versus Kurt Angle featured some actual wrestling before the bashing started, and it got hardcore outside the ring. An Ankle Lock proved decisive. And finally, Booker T and the Undertaker in a title match? Bound to be a swindle on the way. And there was, of course. Shane messing about with Mrs. Taker and a free-for-all in the ring and a shambles to end a fairly shambolic edition of the programme, which was very short on sport and even shorter on entertainment at times.

[Tuesday, 07th] The Bill [Britanniamania Going Underground, 21:00, ITV] has a 4-parter about football hooligans and began with an undercover copper getting a kicking. So the backstabber volunteered DCs Mickey and Paul, DS Debbie (the idle one) and PC Dave Quinnan as an undercover - and totally expendable - penetration force. DCI Meadows, looking like Mr. Garibaldi out of Babylon 5 after a severe haircut - wasn't happy about being left out of the loop.
   Anyway, the blokes became dodgy builders and Debbie became a nurse. The lads met the enemy and Mickey beat him at pool. And by the end of the episode, Mickey was heading Up North for a rumble - except that the opposition couldn't raise enough bodies for a good brawl.

[Thursday, 09th] On The New Adventures of Superman [Wall of Sound, 18:00, BBC 2], there was a criminal with the power to send people to sleep, which came in quite handy for robbing banks. And Clark had been nominated for a prize but Lois hadn't and she was totally cut-up about it. The thieves dressed up as bikers and they had a gadget on their car as well as a hand-operated sound-generator which could zap the Man of Sup as well as the cops.
   Lois tried to vamp the bad guys in a club - with a fake tattoo and a chrome-studded dress - while Jimmy Olsen got himself grabbed while taking pictures. The Man of Sup rescued him and stopped some sonic demolition work. But the head villain, who had an English accent like all the top baddies on US TV, had a Wall of Sound gadget which Superman couldn't penetrate. But while the bad guy was demolishing city hall, the Man of Sup realized that all he had to do was fly faster than sound. So he was able to save the day! And in the end, Clark won the prize and Lois was even more discomfited.
   This week's Ancient Apocalypse [21:00, BBC 2] was about the demise of the Maya and it featured a very strange bloke. A Texan banker whose family bank went bust, he switched careers to archaeology and decided to find out why a civilization which had lasted 2,000 years suddenly collapsed 1,200 years ago. It was the conventional wisdom that such collapses have complex causes. Dick Gill, however, suggested that it was a period of severe drought that made the cities of the Maya uninhabitable.
   He started with the knowledge that the main Mayan cities have no sources of water from rivers and under the ground, and that they are built to channel water from the rainy season into a series of vast reservoirs. Then he went looking for evidence of drought.
   His theory was that severely cold weather in the northern part of the Earth stops the tropical rains from moving up from the equator to Mexico and Central America. And lo, he found evidence in weather records and cores from ice sheets to support his theory. And as a clincher, a core from a lake in the area once occupied by the Maya showed layers characteristic of severe drought. And there was a single seed, which was carbon-dated to around 900 AD.
   And so, the theory seemed to stand up. Severely cold weather in the north, thousands of miles away caused no rain in Central America and millions of Maya died off. The only unanswered question was that if the Maya had survived for 2,000 years, it's reasonable to suppose that they experienced similar severe droughts in the past. So how did they survive then?

[Friday, 10th] How strange that the World Wrestling Federation, with its vast array of WWF, WCW and ECW 'talents', can't put on a wrestling show. Raw Is War [22:00, Sky Sports 1] was dominated by the scriptwriters and the usual promo scripts and it wasn't a triumph for the scriptwriters. We started off with a Hardcore match between Kane and Rob Van Dam which was bound to involve a swindle - which turned out to be interference from Diamond Dallas Page. And then the messing about started, including a harangue from Stephie M-H, who proved that she has a voice that could cut through reinforced concrete in addition to about 3 tons of silicone hanging off her chest. This turned into a good bit of scriptwriting when Chris Jericho tried to fix her up with a couple of guys in Planet of the Apes gorilla suits before zapping her in the face with a custard pie. We got 2 action replays of the pie incident.
   Jacqui taking on Tracy and Torrie of the Alliance proved to be a vehicle for announcing that Ivory has joined the bad guys following the demise of the Right To Censor crew. The scriptwriters also came up with some good stuff in the Commissioner's office. When Tajiri took on X-Pac Sucks, the Jap got the cheers and X-P S got the boos - and also a faceful of Tajiri's green mist on the way to losing one of his 2 belts.
   The messing about involved Booker T trying out for a role in a film to prove that he's a better actor than The Rock - and getting well razzed up, and Stevo and his missus being tedious and setting up a match with Matt Hardy in a particularly clumsy way. I suppose this was designed to show that the broken bones in Stevo's back have healed enough to let him back into the ring.
   The Dudleys took on Y2J and a partner of his choice to avenge Stephie's honour (joke!) - and the partner turned out to be Kurt Angle. We had a WWF ref who managed to keep his back turned while Rhyno zapped Chris Jericho, but Y2J came back to save Kurt from a Wazzup! and an Ankle Lock on Bubbah won it. Christian versus Lance Storm had Edge sneaking in to pull Mr. 'Serious' Storm's pants down during the preliminaries. Of course, we had a WCW ref who ignored Mr. Storm using the ropes to hang on to his Intercontinental belt.
   Lots and lots more messing about included the Undertaker trashing DDP's shrine to Mrs. Taker and getting bashed by Kanyon and DDP, and then more from Booker T at the film studio. Finally, The Rock took on Shane McMahon in a 'Street Fight', which wandered out of the ring area but never got anywhere near the street. 3 dustbins were written off then we got assaults with dustbin lids, singly and in pairs, and a kendo stick. Booker T joined in and got bashed. The Rock was allowed to claim a victory before the scriptwriters obliged him to lie down and let himself be zapped. So it was a rather routine, pathetic ending to what was a weary scriptwriting effort.

[Saturday, 11th] It was interesting to see that in the latest Ross Report from the WWF, commentator Jim Ross suggested that they could cut down on the messing about and get on with a wrestling show. Smackdown! [22:00, Sky Sports 1] was just that while the previous night's Raw wasn't. Of course, we had to put up with a rant by Stevo in the WCW/ECW locker room before we got to the ring, and then it was to watch the APA being swindled out of their WWF tag-team titles by Test, the ref and, incidentally, Kanyon and DDP.
   Poor old Perry Saturn is still stuck with his mop obsession but he managed quite a bit of wrestling against Raven, and finished him off with a King Harley Race-style cradle suplex. Edge brought a ladder into his hardcore match with Rob Van Dam instead of the usual dustbins. A run-in by Lance Storm made it an unwinnable 2 on 1 situation for the WWF competitor. Tajiri and Spike Dudley put on a good show against X-Factor. Albert lifted Spike over his head at the ring apron and just dropped Spike behind himself. And Spike survived! Even though they weighted about twice as much as their opponents, Albert and X-Pac Sucks still needed the ref's help to win.
   Then we were back to the tedium with a harangue from Shane with Booker T chipping in and The Rock striking back, verbally at first and then rushing the ring to get a good kicking initially before zapping Booker and Rock Bottoming Shane through the announcers' table. As seems obligatory, the WWF ref was on the side of WCW tag-team champions for their match with the Brothers of Destruction. But a double choke slam was enough to give the belts to Kane and the Undertaker.
   As 'punishment' for delivering a pie-in-the-face to Steph, Y2J had to take on Hugh Morrus. Jericho won in what seemed like no time flat, then he was zapped by Rhyno. The grand finale was a tag-team elimination match featuring Stevo and the Dudleys versus Kurt Angle and the Hardys. D-Von went out to an Ankle Lock. Matt was pinned then the ref helped to get rid of Jeff Hardy, leaving Kurt in a 2 on 1 situation, which wasn't improved by the ref turning his back while D-Von came back to bash Kurt with a steel chair. Then we had the ceremonial 'breaking of the Olympic Hero's ankle'. Pathetic, or what?

[Tuesday, 14th] The hooligans are still at it on the Bill [Britanniamania Kick Off, 21:00, ITV]. A sadly battered Mickey was adrift from his colleagues and still consorting with the enemy, who were ambushed by a bunch of nutters when not going in for fried specs and psychological torture.
   There was an international match on [at Fulham?] and Mickey was having communications problems, especially when the bad guys were meeting at a pub known to them as the King's Head but the brewery had changed the name! Dave Quinnan was nicked by a stroppy PC while trying to get a photographer nicked for paying the punters to fight. And when the argy bargy started, it was Sun Hill's finest who grabbed Mickey and blew his cover. And the back-stabber wasn't all that pleased.
   The end on Friday.

[Wednesday, 15th] There's another on-going saga on Deep Space 9 [Strange Bedfellows, 18:45, BBC 2] and keeping up with it wasn't helped by a break of a couple of weeks for the athletics. Bad scheduling, BBC.
   Anyway, the Kardassians were finding themselves getting the dirty end of the war and the even dirtier end of the deal between the Breen and the Dominion - which included handing over unspecified parts of the Kardassian empire to the Breen. Meanwhile, Ezri and Worf were still prisoners and Gul Ducat was still leading the Bajoran Kai up the garden path. The Prophets weren't talking to the Kai but she remained as insufferable as ever.
   Amused by Worf's breaking the Vorta clone's neck, the head Kardassian let Worf and Ezri escape, blaming it on the Dominion troops, as part of a plan for getting in with the Federation. He obviously saw that he had no future with the Dominion and the Breen squeezing his people dry. And back on Bajor, the Kai junked the Prophets and agreed to follow the evil wormhole aliens with Ducat. More next week.

[Thursday, 16th] The Man of Sup [The Source, 18:00, BBC 2] was in action right away - as a result of an 'accident' staged at a fair by the bad guys. A supergrass ratted on the bad guys to Lois Lane, then unratted when they got to him. Then the bad guys proved that they weren't all that bad by stuffing Lois and the supergrass into separate 50 gallon drums and rolling them into the harbour. Unfortunately, Superman came to Lois's rescue.
   The supergrass disappeared, presumed croaked, and Lois got the blame - but she did get her wreck of an apartment cleaned up by the Man of Sup. Lois worked out that the supergrass had gone into hiding, and then it was back to the main plot - a scheme to kill the state's governor by crashing the first train on a new subway line [one with a Baker Street] so that the bad guys could put their own crooked politician in his place. But the Man of Sup saved the day, and his Mom and Pop, who were also on the doomed subway train.
   Buffy, the Vampire Slayer [Prophecy Girl, 18:45, BBC 2] was doomed, according to a prophecy. There were weird things going on in Sunnydale, including an earthquake and taps running with blood. And Buffy was due to be zapped by The Master, the King of the Vampires. And killed she was while brawling with the KotV while loads of demons and vampires wandered the Earth above them. Some CPR by Zander brought Buffy back to life, and miraculously cleaned her white ballgown after she'd taken a header into a muddy puddle.
   Meanwhile, the KotV got above ground at last! The hellmouth creature invaded the library, along with assorted demons and vampires, but it retracted when Buffy caught up with The Master and spiked him. And then everyone went to the dance.
   Ancient Apocalypse [21:00, BBC 2] had a go at Sodom & Gomorrah, the ancient cities of the plain, which once stood on the shores of the Dead Sea. The theory put forward was that an earthquake caused a landslip in an unstable region and destroyed the cities in the period 2,800-2,300 BC - the early Bronze Age. The archaeologists in the area have found evidence of an olive oil manufacturing plant, which could have existed only in a large city. The Dead Sea lies at a tectonic plate boundary and the region is subject to strong earthquakes.
   Archaeologists have also found crushed bodies in the remains of buildings, probably earthquake victims, and associated roof beams were dated to 2,350 BC. But what about the fire & brimstone mentioned in the Bible? Well, there is underground methane in the region, which could have been ignited. And sediment layers show faults characteristic of a Richter 6+ earthquake at about the right period.
   The scientists suggested that liquefaction of the ground could have occurred - similar to the events in Kobe, Japan, in 1995. Sodom & Gomorrah would have been built right next to the Dead Sea to harvest the asphalt found in the region - often as blocks weighting a ton or more found floating on the Dead Sea. Tests with models in a hugh centrifuge suggested that it was possible that after the earthquake and liquefaction of the ground, the buildings of the cities could have slid for kilometres - right into the Dead Sea. So the next thing that the archaeologists want to do is go diving in the Dead Sea to look for the remains of Sodom & Gomorrah.

[Friday, 17th] It'll Be Alright On The Night 13 [20:00, ITV] The Al Right Show continues to provide very watchable TV. This one included a 2-minute sequence of black and white bloopers by the likes of Humphrey Bogart, which had been collected and shut away in a studio boss's archive. Most were very minor and unremarkable and they deserve to be reburied after their brief exposure. People bloop better in the colour era.
   On The Bill [Britanniamania, stand by me, 21:00, ITV], the coppers were out nicking hooligans, Mickey got bashed again, he was a target for the head thug - ex-copper The Nap - and he became the bait in a trap. Meanwhile, the back-stabber thought that Mickey was a mole. DC Duncan, in his wife's car, had to babysit Mickey - and the car was petrol-bombed!
   Confined to the nick, Mickey escaped to go hunting and he talked one of the hooligans into giving up the Nap. Dave Quinnan and DC Paul uncovered the mole, but only after he'd taken charge of Mickey's informant. The mole used to be the Nap's brother-in-law, a fact which failed to come out in previous mole-hunts. How? So anyway, the Nap, murdered Mickey's informant, Mickey got to slug the mole and he was insolent to the back-stabber. And he still hasn't learned how to tuck his bloody shirt in.
   Raw Is War [22:00, Sky Sports 1] got off to such a tedious start that your correspondent sent the following email to wwffans@wwf.com:

Dear Vince,   This week's Raw was the worst of the year by a long way and possibly the worst EVER!
  The opening slot and the assault on Tazz was PATHETIC! Sport content- nil. Entertainment content - nil. Stevo is about as inspiring as a bucket of cold cess and we now switch over to something else while he's on the screen.
  Sack the scriptwriters, Vince. Or if you're doing this job, sack yourself!

Back at Raw, members of the audience were suggesting that the opening 25 minutes were part of a plot to make Triple H look interesting by comparison when the School Bully eventually returns. Then Tajiri took on Albert in an obvious mismatch, with the Commish on the outside bashing X-Pac Sucks before Tajiri gave him the green mist. Then Albert got a faceful of red mist and Tajiri pinned him!
   Backstage, Kurt Angle got the better of Hugh Morrus when he tried a sneak attack. Then Edge & Christian took on Lance Storm, Justin Credible and a WWF ref in a match which seemed designed to leave the WWF guys with a limp apiece. Backstage, Shawn Stasiac crashed into the Commissioner's suit of armour when he had a go at Kurt. Next up was a steel cage match featuring Palumbo and O'Haire against the Brothers of Destruction. Surprisingly, Kane and the Taker were allowed to demolish the WWF guys comprehensively. DDP did turn up to chase Mrs. Taker round the ring but she climbed up to the top of the cage to get away from him as the Brothers were performing a double pin on the WCW guys.
   Stephie, with Rhyno, came out to the ring to be tedious. Enter Y2J to make fun of her boob job. Then Booger T [according to a sign in the audience] got in on the act. The Rock also had a go in an entertaining bit of Theatre of Vince which went on much too long. Whatever happened to J.R.'s remarks about the WWF needing to put on a wrestling show?
   Test versus Spike Dudley was another gross mismatch, the sole purpose of which seemed to be as a vehicle for a brawl between the APA and the Dudleys. And a reminder that Test has joined the Alliance because the APA led a mass attack on him when he was suspected of being a WCW mole. Okay, I admit that I had forgotten that particular piece of plot.
   Hurricane Helms had an unsuccessful go at Kurt before the Olympic Hero took on Rob Van Dam for the WWF Hardcore belt. We got run ins by Raven and some other jabroni but the Hardys joined in and it was Jeff Hardy who got a pin on RVD to win the belt. Finally, Rhyno and Booker T took on Y2J and The Rock in a match with a WWF ref who spent a lot of his time turning his back and wrestling with the WWF guys. The ref was nailed by Booker for his trouble and we got a total shambles to finish off a terrible show.

[Saturday, 18th] If we thought Raw was bad, the WWF just gets worst. The first hour of Smackdown! [23:00, Sky Sports 1] was the pits of the universe! We had Shane doing a harangue, Booger T stealing The Rock's lines, The Rock having a rant and challenging Booker - but getting Shawn Stasiac instead and demolishing him in about 10 seconds flat. The Commish and Tajiri took on X-Factor to provide 3-4 minutes of entertainment, then we were backstage with Stevo then in the WWF locker room. There was a whole bunch of guys there so how come they couldn't put on a wrestling show?
   In the second hour, RVD and Rhyno versus Jeff Hardy and Y2J livened things up somewhat. Edge & Christian against DDP and Kanyon was a shambles which ended in a predictable swindle. Tazz versus Kurt Angle was a famous victory for the WWF then a shambles. And finally, The Rock versus Booker in a 'Lights Out' match [whatever that is] was supposed to be interference free but bloody Shane poked his nose in and the announcers' table was demolished again.
   After the dire first hour, there wasn't enough in the second to make up for it. It's time Vince sacked his scriptwriters and let Steve Austin retire instead of keeping him hanging on as a sad parody of his more mobile self.

[Sunday, 19th] The Hungarian GP [12:05, ITV] began with the Forces of Evil Schumacher on pole. David Coulthard was second but he was overtaken easily by Barrichello on the way to the first corner, where Irvine slid off. Coulthard regained his second place at the first round of pit stops thanks to a couple of hot laps and a fast stop. But he lost it again at the second stop when the fuel nozzle refused to come off. Hakkinen harassed Ralf Schumacher for 4th place for a while but he had to come in for a splash and dash and dropped out of contention. A Ferrari 1-2 gave them the drivers' and constructors' championships, and the FoE equalled Prost's total of 51 GP wins. He also set the new record of being the only driver to win 2 championships for each of 2 different constructors. Heidfeld picked up the remaining point for 6th.

[Sunday, 19th] Beech On The Run [21:00, ITV] is a Bill spin-off. Crooked copper DS Don Beech headed for Australia ages ago. When he arrived, he razzed up the local cops a bit, cashed in his diamonds then got on with making himself a major player on the Sydney crime scene. He was just getting set up with the local drug barons, 7 months into his Aussie adventure, when DI [formerly DS] Claire Stanton arrived to hunt him down.
   Beech had killed Stanton's boyfriend, DS Boulton, and she was out for revenge. Stanton and her Aussie escort watched Beech meet a major organized crime figure then Beech spotted Stanton following him. So he phoned her in her hotel room and told her to push off. He then robbed a casino belonging to his first business partner, one of the local Vietnamese mafia.
   Stanton was dismayed to learn that the Aussies hoped to arrest Beech on drug charges instead of helping to extradite him to the UK. Beech's new Aussie business partner gave him a boat - so that he could collect a barrel of heroin, which would be dumped into the sea from a passing freighter. Stanton tried to sabotage the Aussie operation. Meanwhile, Beech was grabbed by his Vietnamese ex-partner - so the Aussie villain had to pick up the heroin himself and was duly busted. Beech outwitted the Vietnamese guy and shot him. Then he clobbered Stanton's escort. So Stanton waved a shotgun at him and put off shooting him until he was driving away in his boat - which blew up when she finally started shooting. But Beech can't be dead because he's in a 6-parter set in the UK starting on Tuesday.

[Tuesday, 21st] Star Trek Voyager had another silly episode tonight [Virtuoso, 18:00, BBC 2] Its primitive scanners had disabled a ship belonging to an arrogant, allegedly superior race of relative midgets, who had not discovered music and who were enchanted by the doctor's singing! They even asked him to jump ship and stay with them as a performer, and he was all ready to do this when he found that they'd built a more advanced holographic being and they didn't want him any more. The episode denies the simple concept that if the doctor is produced by the Voyager's computers, then they could just give a copy to the aliens and retain the original. But logic on Star Trek?
   Arab terrorists took over a US communications centre on Seven Days [Haarp Attack, 18:45, BBC 2] and sent USAF planes to bomb a US airbase in Saudia. Frank Parker back-stepped 7 days but he came out of the machine as a mental 10-year-old. And he didn't get his memory back until D-Day! But, of course, he came through in the nick of time and the bad guys were defeated.
   Battlebots [19:35, BBC Choice] was a very cut-down repeat of a round of semi-finals. Vlad the Impaler murdered Punjar with ease. Pressure Drop, a walker, got stuck on the spikes at the arena wall right away and Deadblow had an easy win. Rammstein was moving erratically right from the start and Minion soon killed it. So there was no good toe-to-toe, slugging it out to be had.
   The regular cast of The Bill are all in retirement for the 6-parter [The] Beech Is Back [22:00, ITV]. The adventure opened with a car bomb on a London bridge as a distraction for a robbery on a deposit vault led by Frankie, Beech's Vietnamese girlfriend. Ex-DI Stanton, now out of the police and into a security firm, got the job of recovering stolen documents for an Arab client. She used a police contact to get to the inside man at the deposit vault so that she could make him an offer, she had the cheek to tell the copper that he was doing a crap job and she was also having an affair with a married colleague.
   Beech was fencing the gear through a dodgy old jeweller, who looked as if he would croak at any moment. He stood up to the rest of the gang hassling him for money but he keeled over when Frankie got heavy with him. Stanton recognized Frankie while she was recovering the documents and Beech found the old bloke's body. More on Friday.

[Thursday, 23rd] Lois got a Pavarotti In A Box at an art exhibition on The New Adventures of Superman [The Prankster, 18:00, BBC 2], which turned out to be a gadget for shattering display cases using sound. The bad guy nicked a huge diamond, cut it down and had a chunk mounted in a ring designed to make Lois's finger itch. He then sprayed a street with slippery stuff to make a delivery truck crash so that he could steal some microchips. The Man of Sup fell victim to a hoax then a dead ex-convict provided the lead to the Prankster's identity. He was some technical genius, who had been sent to gaol as a result of Lois's meddling. Next on his shopping list was some plutonium and Lois. His plan was to zap the Daily Planet building with a plasma weapon but the Man of Sup got in his way.
   Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was suddenly into Series 5 [Buffy v Dracula, 18:45, BBC 2]. She's still with Riley, Willow is still with the other female witch and Zander is still with his 1,200-years-old ex-demon lady - and he was one chosen by Dracula to become his spider-eating slave. Buffy's Mom had a brief look in. Dracula was on the lookout for 'a creature whose darkness rivals his own', namely Buffy, and Giles was all for chucking it in and going home to England.
   Dracula had a chew at Buffy's neck and she was put in Zander's care. So he promptly delivered her to the Count. And there just happens to be a castle in Sunnydale, which no one has noticed before, for Dracula to take over. When Riley and Giles arrived there, Giles was overwhelmed by the 3 vampire sisters. Meanwhile, Buffy was drinking the blood of Dracula. Then we got some ultra-violence and Drac got the point. At least twice. And in the end, Buffy told Giles that she needed him to be her watcher again.
   Battlebots was the grand final [19:30, BBC Choice] Deadblow versus Hazard lasted less than 1 minute - the spinning blade on top of Hazard sliced into the side of its opponent and destroyed something vital. Vlad the Impaler had an easy time against Voltarc, smashing its opponent all over the place before flipping it onto its back. Super Heavyweight Minion did the same sort of job against DoAll, knocking the weapons array off the other robot before battering it into submission.
   The wrestling on the Summer Slam repeat [21:30, Sky Sports 1] began with Lance Storm trying to be serious for a minute but being interrupted by Edge. The battle went mainly Storm's way until he tried a kamikaze move and let Edge come back. A misguided interruption by Christian almost cost his brother the match but the WWF man was able to take the WWF Intercontinental belt from the ECW man. Harangues from Test and Chris Jericho followed.
   Spike and the APA took on the senior Dudleys and Test in a match which proved yet again that Spike must be incredibly tough to withstand the battering that he gets. In the end, poor old Spike went through a table and the WCW ref made sure that he was looking the other way when Shane McMahon ran in with a steel chair. Just another swindle, folks.
   Tajiri and X-Pac Sucks began with a lot of actual wrestling, including the first Surf Board in living memory by X-Pac. The entertaining, all-action match ended with Albert getting a faceful of red mist and X-Pac Sucks walking away with the WWF Light Heavyweight and WCW Cruiserweight belts. Stephie M-H was messing about at ringside while Y2J and Rhyno were going at it. The man-beast put a Boston Crab on Jericho but when he went for his own signature move, the Gore, he rammed the ring post and Y2J got him with a Walls Of.
   The Rock had a close encounter with Mr. Stasiac while delivering a harangue to the Commish. Then Rob Van Dam took on Jeff Hardy in a Hardcore Ladder Match, which began with some wrestling! Then they got down to bashing each other with a ladder. Pretty soon, however, both competitors were staggering around and this too long event ended with RVD triumphant.
   Kanyon and Diamond Dallas Page had nowhere to hide when they took on the Brothers of Destruction in a Steel Cage tag-team championship match. The WCW champions duly got their asses kicked before Kanyon was allowed to climb out, leaving DDP to suffer the full wrath of Kane and the Undertaker. Next was a catalogue of the reasons why Stevo sucks before he took on Kurt Angle - a match which started on the ramp leading to the ring. It was Kurt's turn to shed a little blood for the good old WWF. The match soon echoed the Hardcore match with both men staggering around slowly. In the end, Austin zapped 3 WWF refs before a WCW ref rushed in to disqualify him so that he could keep his belt. Just another swindle, folks.
   Finally, we got Booker T versus The Rock with Shane messing about at ringside and Booker's WCW championship belt at stake. The match wandered out into the crowd - but no, the competitors didn't sign any autographs while among their adoring fans - and back to the ring. Shane's attempt to interfere were stopped by a Clothesline From Hell from Bradshaw of the APA and then a Rock Bottom. And in the end, The Rock became WCW champion!

[Friday, 24th] The holiday for the regular cast of The Bill continues as [The] Beech Is Back again [21:00, ITV]. Frankie nearly bugged out to Paris with a bag of dosh but she went back to Beech. Stanton was playing games with the documents recovered from the security vault robbers to get a hunt for Beech launched and Beech was busy covering up the murder of the ancient jeweller when not arguing policy with Frankie. Stanton ended up in trouble with her boss and the police but she gave Beech a shock when she turned up at the jeweller's shop on the day of his funeral.
   Beech decided that the security vault manager was a liability who needed killing. But the police arrived in the nick of time. And at the end, Frankie sent Stanton a text message telling her where to look for Beech and Beech grabbed her [Stanton] at the cemetery where he had been meeting the dead jeweller's grand-daughter.
   Raw Is War [22:00, Sky Sports 1] began in the Alliance locker room with Stevo and a whole bunch of guys - but probably not enough to put on a wrestling show, the jaundiced viewers were thinking. Lita, Jacqui and Molly Holly opened the show with a tag match against Ivory, Stacy and Torrie. It was all a bit clumsy but the WWF won. Backstage, Steph appointed Test her new hit-man for Christ Jericho. Then The Rock delivered a harangue in the ring and brought in a midget to play the part of Booker T until Lance Storm came out to be serious and challenge him.
   Next up was a 12-man tag-team event, which looked like it was going to be a total shambles but which was surprisingly orderly. There was no Wazzup! from the Dudleys, Spike got well bashed, Scotty 2 Hotty got a Worm in then the Big Show delivered the coup de grace. Y2J's match with Test had Steph and Rhyno shoving their oars in. Jericho needs some allies. The Rock spent a lot of time sprawling on his back in his match with Lance Storm but he pulled a Rock Bottom out of the bag eventually. Then we got the midget Booker giving the fallen Canadian a People's Elbow at the second attempt.
   Christian was totally confident for his European championship match with Matt Hardy but it all went horribly wrong for this Canadian, too. Booker T versus Tajiri was a total waste of time with the Japanese wrestler required to take a pointless bashing. DDP versus Mrs. Taker? The match featured a large contribution from Mr. Taker before the bell and an instant pin on the fallen Mr. Page when the bell was eventually rung. Then Stevo Appreciation Night reached the ring and Steph showed us that her singing voice is every bit as raucous as her speaking shriek. Finally, Kurt Angle turned up, driving a milk truck down to the ring and bombarding the Alliance crew with milk cartons before turning a hosepipe on them!
   After the horrors of last week's Raw, this was a much better show. The video-clip padding still grated and the fillers had a tendency to run on too long but this performance showed that the WWF can put on a decent show if it makes the effort. Given some work to sharpen things up, they could be excellent - and there's no excuse for putting on another rotten show like last week's when we know they can do better.

[Saturday, 26th] RVD versus Jeff Hardy (again) opened the WWF's Smackdown! programme [20:45, Sky Sports 1] and both men were soon crawling around. Jeff put RVD on a table at ringside, climbed a huge ladder and made a suicide leap onto him. Of course, Van Dam didn't stay around to be demolished and Jeff was escorted out by EMTs after he had been peeled out of the wreck of the table. Which was Raven's cue to leap out and try, unsuccessfully, to take the Hardcore title. Then we got some bitching from Steph then Stevo. Y2J provided a counterblast then we got a replay of Kurt Angle's milk delivery to Stevo's Appreciation Night. And that was half an hour gone.
   The Dudleys versus the Big Show and The Wunn was all 'bash Billy Gunn' at first. The Show suffered a Wazzup! and the Wunn suffered a 3-D, but the Dudleys couldn't do that to the Show and were duly destroyed. Kurt Angle versus Kanyon actually featured the odd wrestling hold, even from Kanyon, but the Ankle Lock won it. Rhyno, Test, Booker T and a WCW ref took on The Rock and the APA next. And it was a total shambles, as expected. Edge & Christian against the Brothers of Destruction for the WWF tag-team championship was pretty much a no-contest, as expected.
   Ivory 'defeated' Lita via a swindle involving Hurricane Helms. And then we got yet another summary of Kurt Angle's match with Stevo at Summerslam before the Commish announced that Stevo's title would be up for grabs in his match with a sadly battered Chris Jericho. The match went on for quite a long time by non-pay-per-view standards. And, of course, Austin 'won' by cheating, as expected to end another show with too many video fillers, less wrestling action than RAW, despite what it says in this week's Ross Report, but less than the usual quota of tedium in the live fillers.
   p.s. Is Steve Austin deaf but too vain to wear an appliance? Or is there another reason why he goes round yelling, 'What?' all the time?

[Tuesday, 28th] The Beech [21:00, ITV] was pulled over by the cops, presumably for yakking on his mobile while driving, while he had Stanton in his boot. So he pretended to be Sun Hill's Sergeant Boyden and got away with it. Then he dug a big hole in the woods but didn't put Stanton in it. Instead, he took her to WW 2 underground bunker, which had all mod cons. Frankie wanted Stanton dead and she scalded Stanton's feet while Beech was indulging in some half-hearted torture.
   Beech went out to distribute crisp packets of dosh to his accomplices and came back to a row with Frankie. The police arrived while he was clearing out his flat and he had a near miss. Meanwhile, Frankie and Stanton abandoned the bunker - Stanton barely able to walk on her scalded feed. Then Frankie was trying to run Stanton over! So Stanton stood in the road and waved down another motorist, who was ... Beech! More on Friday.

[Wednesday, 29th] There's a crisis going on around Deep Space 9 [When It Rains, 18:45, BBC 2]. The Breen can zap the propulsion systems of Federation and Romulan spacecraft, so the Klingons - outnumbered 20 to 1 - are the only ones able to fight them. Colonel Kira got the job of teaching the Kardassian resistance how to become guerilla fighters and Dr. Bashir discovered that Odo has the plague which is wiping out the shape-shifters. He tried to get some medical records from Earth Central to help in his search for a cure for Odo but he ran into bureaucratic resistance.
   Meanwhile, the Kardassian resistance didn't want to fight fellow Kardassians and Kira was having a tough time with them, the Bajoran Kai has found out that Ducat is really a Kardassian and she's got the hump with him, the Klingon Chancellor, Gauron, wanted to replace General Martok as the head of the fighing forces and Odo started to fester.
   Ducat was blinded by reading forbidden text in a book and the Kai turned him out on the streets as a blind begger as his punishment. Gauron decided that it was time to grab his share of the glory and launch a full-scale attack on the Dominion, even though the move would be pure suicide [as they're outnumbered 20 to 1]. And finally, Dr. Bashir worked out that the sinister Section 31 back on Earth created the shape-shifter plague and infected Odo with it 3 years earlier.

[Thursday, 30th] Superman opened with the US Army showing off a new weapon [Operation Blackout, 18:00, BBC 2] and the bad guys using it to kill a general to get their own man in his job before the Man of Sup could wreck the automatic gun. Lois recognized the assassin, who was at college with her and who was officially 'dead'. And another college friend, the 'dead' man's girlfriend, was running a New Age shop in Metropolis. The bad guys set all of the traffic lights on green to cause chaos, zapped the PC and phones at the Daily Planet and elsewhere, and then cut the power. But the Planet was still able to use an ancient linotype machine to print a one-sheet edition! Lois got pushed out of a window during the blackout but, unfortunately, there was a flagpole for her to cling to and the Man of Sup rescued her.
   The grand plan was for the bad guys to hold the world to ransom using a killer satellite but the Man of Sup nipped up into space to point it away from Earth just as it was about to zap the army base where Lois was lurking. Boo!
   Buffy, the Vampire Slayer [Real Me, 18:45, BBC 2] has moved into an alternate universe, apparently. She has an obnoxious, 14-year-old sister called Dawn all of a sudden. No explanations, she's just there now.
   The owner of the local magic shop was chomped by a bunch of 4 vampires and the blonde girl in charge of the pack was planning to zap the slayer that very night. She's called Harmony and she used to be a would-be cheerleader at Buffy's school before she became vampirized.
   Harmony and her crew turned up at Buffy's house but the slayer was out. And the kid sister only invited Harmony in! Spike put Harmony down thoroughly in the cemetery then she grabbed the kid sister. Buffy bashed Spike's nose until he told her where to find Harmony. Then it was dusting time for the 4 male vamps but Harmony got away. And in the end, Giles took over the magic shop to give himself an income, even though the owners have a habit of turning up dead.
   Secret History [20:00, Channel 4] took a look back at television in the Thirties. Cable TV, isn't that something modern? No, they had it in Nazi Germany when the world's first regular TV service began. Most of the material was broadcast live and they had no method of recording from the TV cameras but they could show film. And 285 rolls of broadcast film have survived. And so we saw people heiling Hitler one minute and larking about the next.
   The 20 x 20 TV sets were in the hands of Party members, TV technicians and journalists at first, but the public could view the programmes in special TV parlours. The entertainment didn't make much of an impression initially but people flocked to watch the 1936 Olympics.
   The broadcasters used a 'nearly live' system for outdoor events. A camera mounted on the roof of a van exposed movie film, which travelled into the van and into a processing unit, and the imaging system broadcast the developed film - and the archived material included this sort of footage. There were TV cooks back then, and at the school for teaching brides to be household managlement skills, they all had to Heil Hitler before class.
   The TV service broadcast for up to 4 hours per day, offering mainly light entertainment, but also visits by bigwigs such as Mussolini, where TV was a poor cousin of the newsreel companies and kept well in the background, much like the ordinary spectators. But it could provide slow motion replays of knockouts in boxing matches.
   The TV service moved from its shoe-box office to larger premises in 1938 and branched out into drama. It was planning to distribute 10,000 sets for a big Xmas in 1939 but the war got in the way. The BBC went off the air for the duration. The Germans were back after just 6 weeks. The TV service made itself a wartime essential by providing entertainment for the troops. The Allied bombing put a damper on things in 1943, although the last bit of film showed an undamaged part of Berlin with vegetables growing on the traffic islands, and it all came to an end in the autumn of 1944.

[Friday, 31st] The Beech [21:00, ITV] and girfriend Frankie reckon they're not cold-blooded killers, and that's why they can't kill Claire Stanton face-to-face. From questioning the dozy pair of coppers who stopped Beech on Tuesday, Stanton's former colleagues learned that Beech was still alive and they started rolling up his gang. Stanton was handcuffed to an iron-framed bed but she found that she could release herself by lifting the top part of the frame out of its socket.
   She discovered a CB radio in the bunker but she couldn't convince the dozy sod whom she contacted that he should ring the police. But when he saw her on TV, the dozy sod obliged. So the police began to search an area thick with bunkers while Frankie was disposing of the last of the jewellery from the robbery.
   Stanton let Beech catch her with the radio and he smashed it. Then Stanton told him that she'd broken the lock on the door and they were now trapped in the bunker. Then the generator ran out of petrol and they had no ventilation system! Stanton and Beech hit the bottle until the police found them and started cutting through the steel outer door. Beech put some gas cylinders against the door so that the heat from the cutting torch would explode them, then he got away by bashing his way into the ventilation system. So why didn't he think of that sooner?
   Oh, no, it was Shane at the start of Raw Is War [22:00, ITV]. Then The Rock put him straight as part of some routine time-wasting. Next up was Stevo skiving out of his match because he's hurt his arm. Aaah! The Undertaker took on Albert with X-Pac Sucks interfering - and getting bashed. Then a choke-slam saw off Albert. Hurricane Halms gave a good backstage interview about his obsession with the Green Lantern before taking on Matt Hardy for the European belt. Ivory zoomed in with a tyre-iron to zap Lita and then Matt as part of a routine swindle. Then we had Kurt Angle zapping Raven backstage and Stevo bitching.
   Bradshaw of the APA had a bashing match with Test - with Shane running around, making a nuisance of himself. The Rock's match with Rhyno started long before they got to the ring and lasted a surprisingly long time by Raw standards. Rocky did a lot of lying around on his back, as usual. Shand stuck his nose in but the APA chased him out of the arena. Then Rhyno tried a Gore and rammed the ring post instead. And he was duly Rock Bottomed.
   Shawn Stasiac set a trap for Kurt Angle, putting a bucket of milk over a door, but he got Mrs. Stevo instead and left the arena at high speed. Edge versus Hugh Morrus had Christian at the announcers' table in a pair of hairy specs. Then he got up on the ring apron and had a go at Mr. Morrus - and got his brother disqualified. Next, we had the Big Show doing his Booker T impersonation and Steph confronting Y2J. The Show was wearing his Booker dreadlocks when he came down to the ring and tried to do a spinnerooni - only to be attacked by Booker. It all ended when Booker resorted to a steel chair to show how mean he is.
   Y2J and Kurt Angle were supposed to take on Stevo and a tag-team partner initially. That became Rob Van Dam and Raven until Kurt zapped Raven. Was Stevo back in the line-up? No, Tazz got the call instead. This was another very long bout by Raw standards with Kurt getting the win and Austin sneaking in to bash Kurt and steal his Olympic medals. Didn't Chris Benoit do that a while ago? Looks like the WWF's scriptwriters are into recycling as an alternative to coming up with new ideas.