Diamond Geezer (ITV1); Archangel (BBC1); The Adventures Of Robert Louis Stevenson (BBC1): When a top TV name is presented as "you've never seen him before", the makers risk viewers saying - after seeing the evidence - that they never want to see him like that again.

I doubt that will happen to David Jason and Diamond Geezer. The ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel or a series. ITV commissioners would be foolish to pass the chance to mount with a new vehicle for Jason, whose name guarantees quality and good ratings.

Diamond Geezer was a caper movie, with Jason as that old favourite "the loveable rogue". Des was nearing the end of a three-year stretch behind bars. He looked harmless enough, only good for pushing round the tea trolley and handing out cuppas. Appearances can be deceptive. He was that other old favourite "a master of disguise" who is plotting an ingenious robbery. The only snag was that he was forced to enlist the help of new young prisoner, Phil, to carry out his plan.

Whereas writer Caleb Ransom's recent drama series Distant Shores was fresh and quirky, Diamond Geezer was predictable and derivative. Okay, so there were a couple of twists that I didn't see coming and Jason was clearly having fun playing a character role.

Diamond Geezer passed two hours pleasantly enough and compared to Archangel, the two-part thriller based on Robert Harris's bestseller, was a masterpiece. The adaptation, by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, was competent enough. It just looked and felt so old-fashioned, like something left over from the era of Cold War thrillers.

Daniel Craig was the academic, "Fluke" Kelso, on the trail of Stalin's secret diaries in a cold and snow Russia, hindered rather than helped by an American reporter eager to break "the story that will shake the world".

Reading the novel was probably more exciting that watching this unfold predictably on screen with Kelso, pursued by intelligence agents and the military across the bleak landscape.

Better than either of the more-publicised weekend drama offerings was the drama-documentary The Adventures Of Robert Louis Stevenson. There were a couple of places where this looked too much like a commercial for the BBC's latest adaptation of the author's Kidnapped, but did reveal many surprising - to me, at least - things about the Scottish writer, whose life was as eventful and adventurous as his fictional creations.

Did you know that he came from a family of lighthouse engineers and that one of his first publications was a technical paper on lighthouses? More interesting was this middle-class man's fascination for the seedier side of Edinburgh, with its bars peopled by prostitutes and poets. Here, he could write in secret and collect juicy material for his books.

The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was influenced by the drug, ergotine, he took for a lung condition resulting from having tuberculosis in his twenties. The muscle spasms and hallucinations it caused alerted him to how drugs could change a personality. The Jekyll and Hyde character was born.

Later, he embarked on his own adventure, sailing the South Seas and settling on the paradise island of Samoa. He joined the Samoans in fighting for independence, defending his home against the German "invaders". This was the stockade of Treasure Island for real. Fiction had become fact.

Published: 21/03/2005