In deep... and hoping they stay there

THE habit of TV producers looking no further than the last series they saw when casting a new programme is getting ridiculous, with the same actors turning up again and again.

No content with having Fiona Allen, from Smack the Pony and Happiness, as a psychologist, the makers of In Deep compound the confusion. It's difficult to concentrate when you're subjected to flashbacks in which a character's dead wife is played by the same actress currently on screen as The Bill's DI Samantha Nixon.

This distraction did serve to take my mind off the unlikely pairing of Nick Berry and Stephen Tompkinson as undercover agents. That's undercover as in covert not bedcovers. Neither makes a convincing hard man but, as someone remarked, at least it stops Berry making records.

"You're the one with the issues," Garth (Tompkinson) accused Liam (Berry), still recovering from the fact that his dead wife is appearing in The Bill.

They're pretty hopeless at their jobs. I would say they were more blundercover rather than undercover cops if the scriptwriter hadn't had the sense to say it first.

The only reason for hanging around with them for a very long two hours was to see if Jason Done's well-done psycho villain carried out his threat to superglue together the lips of whoever was betraying him.

Footballer-turned-actor (I use the latter term loosely) Vinnie Jones has a reputation as a hard man too, although the fly-on-the-wall documentary Vinnie aims to show all facets of the man. We saw him wrestle with a new chip fryer, talk about decorating his new home, and recording an album (don't give up the day job, Vinnie).

After the Michael Jackson Bashir-ing, celebrity documentaries have a lot to live up to and Vinnie came up with nothing to make you sit up and take notice until Vinnie went down the pub. An argument looked likely to see him prove his hard man status until, perhaps mindful of the cameras present, he walked away from a fight.

Another of BBC3's new series, Burn It, is more concerned with sex than violence as it follows the relationships of three chaps in their late 20s. The series is bright and sparky, and aimed fairly and squarely at the youngish target audience of the new digital channel. It's also rather well done, a neat mix of drama and laughs.

The trio aren't always lucky in love, although Jon has a strange power over women. "He's like a lost child, he makes you want to scoop him up and breast-feed him," says an admirer.

Carl is afraid to commit, although always eager to please. "You'd fall in love with Ann Widdecombe if she bought you half a lager," he was told.

Andy explains to use the gospel according to Carl: "Never give in to the notion of family, monogamy or sobriety" - not an idea, I suspect, that would earn him a drink from Miss Widdecombe.