Hayley's Face

In soapland, we're used to our favourite characters smashing their cars and being told they'll never walk again... only for them to walk again a few weeks later. But Home and Away's current plot involving Hayley being maimed for life, her face forever changed, is just unbelievable. Mainly because she looks exactly the same, except for a big Pudsey Bear-style patch on her face. The make-up department could do a lot better, but she needs to be beautiful if she's going to spend the rest of her life with the ever handsome Noah - unless something terrible happens first (clue: it does).

Comedy Gangsters Ahoy!

If there's one thing EastEnders needs, it's more ridiculously pointless gangsters. But at least the latest is of fine pedigree - Billy Murray (aka The Bill's Don Beech) can do menacing while also being vulnerable. He could be the Square's answer to Tony Soprano, so long as the soap gets some decent writers in.

Seeing as how The Bill is full of ex-Walforders, it makes sense that there's finally some exchange programme going on. So, please can Cathy Bradford bring her lesbian-ex-wife murdering ways to the East End soon? And it's high time Andrew "Dave Quinnan" Paul returned as Alfie Moon's comedy brother. And what would I give to see a big Burnside-Beech face-off in the Square?

A (rather late) Note on BBC3's "Comedy Tuesday"

To mark the return of Little Britain, BBC3 has proclaimed that Tuesday will from hence forth be known as Comedy Tuesday. This is quite a large claim from a channel whose current comedy offerings stretches little further than back-to-back episodes of the shitcom Two Pints of Lager...

Naturally, Little Britain returned on fine form which only the odd sketch missing the mark (as usual involving PM aide Sebastian, last week meeting Nigel Havers). And in a clever move to make Little Britain seem even funnier, BBC3 followed it with something truly terrible. My Life in Film - a vehical for My Family's Kris Marshall – took a good idea (guys who can't separte fact from film) and totally anihilated. Where the Simpsons feature a dozen film spooks per episode, My Life in Film took just the one flick – Top Gun – and tried to lampoon it for half an hour. With direly dull results. Perhaps tomorrow night's Rear Window spook will be better - but with the production values of Two Pints of Lager, this show is a no-starter.

The next hour was far from great. Good Girls Don't raised the odd chortle, though it is basically Boy Meets World with the odd sex gag thrown in - could be a grower. As for The Graham Norton Effect, it's just such a shame what overexposure has down to Norton - he's almost a self-parody of himself.

Too conclude, Tuesdays on BBC3 will now be known as Comedy Half-Hour.

Leave the Christmas Charts Alone, Geldof & Keating

Christmas should be a time for presents, sledging and bad pop music. And by bad pop music, I mean well-made, sing-along bad music. Which is why this year's Christmas number one race is already sounding like the most boring in years. The current favourite is a dire meeting of minds - Ronan Keating and Cat Stevens, with a "new" version of Boyzone's first hit Father and Son. Not only a shameless advert for Ronan's greatest hits package, but a disturbing threat to Cliff Richards' title of Old People's Christmas Fave.

To make matters worse, Bob Geldof has announced a double a-side version of Band Aid - featuring both the original and the PWL poppier version. I know it's for charity, but it is the most horrible, patronising, obvious Christmas number one ever. What's more, he's considering doing another one with the latest batch of publicity starved popsters, pretending to have an interest in doing good. Please, just write a new song, Bob. I really hope Cliff pulls something amazing out of the bag (perhaps a Crimbo reworking of Just Don't Have the Heart?), or one of the Busted bands have do a top Christmas cover to beat this two objectionable records to the top of the charts...

A Village Missing Its Idiot

Sam Dingle is the latest Emmerdaler facing the axe, and after 10 years it's probably about time. His hit-and-run on Edna was incrediably boring, and it's time the man-boy grew up and left the village. Even the troubles that Paul Shane will be bringing to the Dingles won't spice Sam up.
More worrying are the departures of Syd and Chloe - there's a lack of eye candy in Emmerdale, despite Robert Sugden's recent chest inflation. It seems likely that Syd will exit via whatever convoluted, bitch-fest plot takes Chloe out of the village, no doubt involving the King clan. It could even hook up with the Charity departure plot - could there be another Christmas cull in the offing?

Maya Sharma - We Salue You

With just over a week until Dev and Sunita's wedding gets invaded by the cops, I learn there's even more mad Maya mayhem still to come. In particular, I'm looking forward to her torching the corner shop, which desperately needs a refit. It's just a shame that characters as demented as Maya can't last forever - though hopefully Corrie will do the right thing and not kill her off. Just send her off into the sunset, with the ever-present threat of a surprise return.

BBC3 Officially Rubbish (except Little Britain, of course)

Having become an enforced Freeview digital viewer, I'm finding the choice of programming on offer relatively slim. So I was relatively unshocked to learn that some regulator has concluded that BBC3's output is really rather poor. Apart from the odd comedy gem - Little Britain, Might Boosh, etc - the schedules are full of half-arsed, youthy documentaries and pointless spin-offs from already pointless BBC1 programmes. The channel needs a decent, returning drama about people who are too old to appear Hollyoaks but too young for the antiquated, primetime soaps. They need more music - a decent rival to TOTP featuring new bands and pre-release tunes. It needs a TFI-style show and live comedy. Most importantly, it needs to never, ever show Two Pints of Lager again, repeat Catterick, and reshow the day's episode of Neighbours late night for those at work during the day.

Another Reason for a Cilla Pic

Oooh, mad Maya almost got rumbled last week, by none other than mad Shell Dockley, or Frankie as she seems to go by these days. The unpopular Baldwin gal surely smelt a rat when a taxi driver remembered taking Maya to her wedding - but will she remember the conversation after Sunita gets arrested at her reception?
Other highlights from the weekend omnibus:
-Les and Fiz trying to catch Cilla out at the bingo
-Tracy tormenting baron Karen outside the Rovers
-Sally telling dog-mad Rosie that she can have a guinea pig ("they don't live long - it'll be dead by the time you get bored of it)
-Shelly finally developing a spine and turfing Charlie out

Where's the Midsomer Magic?

Who says ITV can't do comedy? Midsomer Murders returned for the first of two new cases last night, and was almsot as dememnted as ever. Featuring a murder at a funeral parlour, a spooky spiritualist and her Victorian guide (a serving girl killed when her dress caught fire), an odd-ball healer, and a strange steam-railway enthusiast, this episode should have been far scarier and funnier than it actually was. The highlight was the flashback to the first murder when the killers plotted how to react to "finding" the body. But the Midsommer magic wasn't qutie there - the oddballs weren't odd enough and the murders weren't macabre enough. Not to mention the fact that we still miss Troy - please come back from Middlesbrough!

Why, EastEnders, why?

I know I go on about EastEnders a lot for a soap I claim to hate, but axing one of the few decent characters left in the soap is really irritating. Undercover manicurist Kate Mitchell is one of the few rounded residents of the Square, and ideally the entire cast should be axed alowing she and Chrissie to restart the show from scratch. And as for the rumours of yet more unrealistic gangsters arriving in Walford, it's taking exactly the same path to doom as Brookside. Even in psycho Sarah does kill off the Fowlers (which she doesn't), we still need some real plots.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

As The Bill goes from strength to deranged stregth, there's just one storyline that I'm not enjoying - the disapperance of Sam Nixon's daughter. She's been missing for weeks, but the other cops have only just decided to look into it, and the character is so wholy unsympathetic that surely no one really wants her to come out of this alive. That is supposing she has been kidnapped... The only two possible outcomes as far as I can see are that she's either stringing her poor ma along, or she's being held captive (or is in league with) that profiler bloke what used to be in Casualty. He's just a little too keen to offer Lisa Maxwell a shoulder to cry on.
Anyway, in a fortnight's time we've got Kerry's murder by the Sun Hill sniper, which will spice things up a lot. The culprit is the obvious suspect, but if you can't wait to find out, I think a lot of the TV mags may slip up by revealing all next Tuesday...