Radio Times

Hollyoaks

There are many bad apples in Hollyoaks, but only one that's rotten to the core. Warren Fox has caused so much misery to so many people - Russ, Mercedes, Ste, Cindy, the Barneses, the Deans and don't forget Justin - it's a wonder the villagers haven't ganged up, Murder on the Orient Express-style, and offed him. After all, there's no-one as smart as Hercule Poirot to solve the case. Except possibly Tom Cunningham. One man has had enough of Warren's villainy and that man is Calvin Valentine. (Would you be quaking in your boots? Nor me.) Still, Calvin is intent on justice, or possibly revenge. With support...

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Well, it's nearly over and I am bereft. No more Mad Men. It ends on Tuesday (5 May) - what are we Madettes to do? The final episode is a doozy, so completely wonderful I wanted to wrap it round me like a blanket and never let it go.

Of course, I realise that a fair chunk of you out there, wherever you are, probably haven't even heard of Mad Men, let alone actually watched it. Its viewing figures have been pitiful, despite a huge marketing push from BBC4, and it's ended up being watched by 13 people and a stoat called Colin....

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Watching Reggie Perrin had a necrotising effect - I realised I was dying slowly when Reggie (Martin Clunes, left) made a joke to his wife's female friends about how he admired women because: "Anyone who can bleed for five days without dying deserves a bunch of flowers every now and again."

I wasn't sure I'd heard that correctly, so I had to watch again on iPlayer, just to make sure. No, I wasn't wrong, I really had heard a pathologically abysmal gag about menstruation on a primetime BBC1 "comedy".

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making jokes about menstruation, in fact there's...

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Q: What do you call someone who patronises you, lies to your face, then pretends to be your mate?

A: An estate agent.

Yes, Philip really lived up to the high standards set by his profession this week as he lead Ignite in a task to value and sell a collection of items ranging from a plastic skeleton to a valuable Indian rug.

First, he refused to entertain Lorraine's idea that, y'know, maybe they should actually check that the rug wasn't worth anything before dismissing it. Then, when it turned out she was right, he denied that she'd ever mentioned it. And...

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Of all the high-profile guests on Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, few come with such malleable features as TV legend Morph. Just six inches high and made of brown Plasticine, Morph provided the fledgling Aardman Animations studio with its first sniff of success in 1976 (nearly ten years before Nick Park joined the company), when he debuted on kids' art show Take Hart.

Morph's appearance in next week's Ashes (Monday 4 May) lasts barely 15 seconds; Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) has a surprisingly shocking and sinister encounter with him via her television - but it took Aardman director Darren Robbie over...

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The publicity blurb for one-off drama Compulsion (Monday 4 May, ITV1) tells us that it's "loosely based on the Jacobean tragedy The Changeling, written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley in 1622." Which must mean that it's a bit posh and classy, right?

Yeah, right, as The Young People say. It's more like every portly middle-aged man's fantasy. Ray Winstone, whose production company made Compulsion, plays the portly, middle-aged and faithful retainer Flowers, who is chauffeur and general factotum to a wealthy Indian businessman and his family.

Flowers doesn't say much, but he is pining for the love of the wealthy businessman's beautiful...

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Who deserves to take home a TV Bafta this year? Ahead of the British Academy Television Awards (Sunday 26, 8:00pm, BBC1), Radio Times TV editor Alison Graham runs her critical eye over the 2009 nominees…

ACTOR

Nominees: Stephen Dillane The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall C4; Jason Isaacs The Curse of Steptoe BBC4; Ken Stott Hancock and Joan BBC4; Ben Whishaw Criminal Justice BBC1

TV editor's pick: Ben Whishaw
Arguably the strongest line-up of the night, with towering performances by three experienced actors. But Ben Whishaw deserves the prize for his turn as a terrified, innocent young man wrongly convicted of murder. Read more...

EastEnders

Men - can't live with them, can't shoot them. Or so they say. The shocking way Phil's behaving - abusing Shirley, Heather, Ben, birthday boy Billy, a mute Tracey and indeed anyone in the way of his next drink - means he may well find himself in someone's crosshairs. Again. And all because he's fallen out with his mummy. Charming Tamwar and Zainab, Syed is trying to get back into his dad's good books with little success - though his progress into Janine's boudoir goes infinitely better. Strumpet. Him, not her, that is. Now where did I put that Taser?

Coronation Street

Birthday parties can be fraught affairs...

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Katie & Peter: the Next Chapter Stateside began with a tautological fanfare from the excitable narrator: "Britain's number one celebrity couple in the UK are back!"

It was at this point that I could feel my brain cells draining away, like scum down a plughole. It's my own fault - the fumblings of Katie Price and her husband, Peter Andre, always have this effect on me, yet I keep going back for more.

This time, the couple are off to America, where Peter hopes to revive his music career - though Peter, who looks like a shocked Action Man, appears to have other priorities when it comes to...

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Since the departure of Gil Grissom, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has become, more often than not, a dull and turgid thing, which is a shame as it was once the most mighty of all police procedural dramas.

Grissom was the beating heart of CSI, giving blood and life to his small team. Now he's gone, they are quietly dying. I feel for Laurence Fishburne, who admittedly doesn't directly replace Grissom - Grissom's deputy, Catherine Willows, has taken over - but he was brought in to fill a Grissom-sized gap. He can't, through no fault of his own, largely because his character, Dr Raymond Langston, is so...

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Woah. The last thing you need when you've just been dragged out of bed at 6am is a giant Sir Alan staring down at you, every crease and grizzled hair visible in pin-sharp detail on the London Imax screen. It's enough to make you lose your breakfast. Hmmm… Frosted Chuck-Ups, anyone? Well, it's about as good an idea for a breakfast cereal as Phillip's underpants-based brand…

Until recently, I'd thought Phillip was all right. Yes, he often came across as bolshie and negative, but I put that down to a determination not to suffer bad ideas. Actually, though, a large proportion of the ideas on...

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After 15 series of finely crafted trauma, ER is flatlining for ever. In a tribute to all the medics who've walked the emergency room of County General, here's my pick of the ground-breaking drama's best episodes. Do you agree with my choices? Why not post a comment below and let me know. But first of all, pass the kleenex, stat!

1. Love's Labor Lost - series one

Still in its infancy, ER delivers a harrowing, almost unbearably tragic episode that is surely its finest hour. Mark misdiagnoses a pregnant woman and it all goes very badly wrong very quickly. A...

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Suralan, (sob, sob, sob), I've been on an incredible journey and I don't want it to end. I'm doing this for my sick mother/dead wife/arthritic hamster/whatever." Oops, sorry, that's not The Apprentice, that's The X Factor.

"Suralan, I'm passionate about food and winning means everything to me. I simply can't leave now, this is my life." Oops, sorry again, that's MasterChef.

"Suralan. I've given 110 per cent, I'm brilliant at business and if you fire me you'll regret it because none of the other competitors is as good as me." Ah, that's better, THAT'S The Apprentice (Wednesday BBC1). But you can't blame me for...

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EastEnders

Balzac said that "the heart of a mother is a deep abyss, at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." The problem with that, of course, is that certain sons seem so intent on searching for the vein of maternal clemency that they bleed their mother dry.

For "seem" is the operative word. Even if we didn't know nasty Nick's true motives, his attempts at being good to his mum, Dot, would still be like a shark smiling at a surfer. Which is to say, entirely unsettling. Even worse is enlisting his daughter, a Trojan horse with pigtails, in the escalating plot to kill Dot....

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Something strange and worrying happened to me this week…I missed an episode of Damages, and I didn't care. This would have been unthinkable during the first series, when I hungered for weekly instalments like an anaemic vampire.

But as for series two - meh, so what? I have two big problems with it. The first one is called William Hurt, who kills the pace whenever he appears because he is so obviously acting that you can actually see him do it. With really good actors, like Glenn Close (Damages's terrifying lawyer Patty Hewes), you can't. With Hurt, you can.

All of that...

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