Serena Davies

In an instance of surprising if rather dispiriting coincidence, both the BBC and ITV1 have made new comedy dramas about PAs. BBC Three's Personal Affairs began last night; in July arrrives ITV1's Monday, Monday. Neither will make TV history, and it is interesting that the BBC scheduled Personal Affairs at the same time as Occupation: thus putting the two dramas head to head, which is normally a no-no for the corporation unless it wants to bury one of them...

The BBC Three show has at least been made by people with wildly overactive imaginations. Yesterday, the director had decorated one of the PAs with cartoon red blobs and another had cartoon birds flying around her. (Although, oddly, only the first time we met them.) Also, sometimes, when other characters viewed the secretaries, they appeared nude or dressed up in Mad Men-style Sixties garb depending on the particular viewer's fantasy.

This reminded me of those old Smirnoff ads when the world became exciting when the drinker viewed things through the prism of a vodka bottle. But it didn't do enough to divert from the sea of vaguely male-chauvinist cliches swilling around elsewhere. There was the blonde bimbo who's actually really clever; the sexually voracious brunette; the moody one who was made to look ugly but isn't. It was all very glossy, but no amount of visual trickery could veil this strange show's vacant heart.

ITV3, never previously a destination channel, looked as if it might have a hit on its hands with Ladies of Letters, a TV adaptation of Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield's popular series of books of the same name consisting of letters between two fictional friends. It had previously been made into a popular Radio 4 series starring Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge, and the television version had secured the equally redoubtable Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman. But, sadly, the transition proved an unhappy one.

During yesterday's opener, the sight of the two actresses speaking the letters to camera while engaged in a bit of cooking or a surreptitious sherry was far from enough to hold the attention. The letters bore only the minimum of narrative momentum and the subtleties of the occasional malapropism and shift in tone were overwhelmed by one's sheer desperation to see an actual event take place on screen. Perhaps the prosaic lesson of it all is that Ladies of Letters may be very jolly and wry on the radio but when it comes to TV, unless you've got a writer of the calibre of Alan Bennett on board, it's just too boring to watch talking heads for half an hour.

For an extra point, why are panel games so popular?

Over the next two days, Serena Davies can find almost nothing to watch except comedy quiz shows - which, she says, are a peculiarly British pastime

A new comedy drama series that's at least a breath of fresh air from the endless round of whodunits which dominate prime time. There are criminals here too, but such feeble relics of robbers that when they're involved in a car crash during a police chase they get out to see if the bobbies are ok.

With Jenny Agutter and Shameless's Dean Lennox Kelly helping make up a solid cast, there's a couple of genuinely funny moments in the first episode, with the promise of more to come.

Hotel Babylon, BBC1's celebrity-sprinkled, glorified soap, is back for a third series. So far, this stilted comedy drama about preposterous shenanigans in a five-star hotel has proved remarkably popular. The programme may be in for a struggle, though, now that it has lost its best star, the sexy Tamzin Outhwaite. Max Beesley, her erstwhile henchman, now promoted to hotel manager, has never exactly oozed leading-man charisma, and he failed to electrify in last night's opener.

Still, there was something sneakily enjoyable about the episode, which pivoted on the unlikely possibility that vain receptionist Anna (Emma Pierson) cared about fair-trade garment manufacture. Although it was the incidental trivia rather than the plotline that provided the amusement. "Sorry I'm late, I had an early morning dental appointment," said head of housekeeping Jackie (Natalie Mendoza), as she tumbled in, dishevelled, to a meeting. "Oh you poor thing, did you get drilled?" fired back Anna.

Perhaps Hotel Babylon's secret is that it offers a parallel universe where we can laugh at people who behave with a shamelessness we secretly rather envy.

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