The all-singing, all-dancing vampire show

THERE was a time when American TV series were derided by snobby Brits as formulaic and unimaginative. How things have changed, with series such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and ER demonstrating that US programmes go places ours don't.

I can't think of a homegrown series that would risk an all-singing, all-dancing episode like the Buffy special. "We were talking and then it was like we were in a musical," explained one puzzled character in Once More With Feeling, as the town began to resemble an Andrew Lloyd Webber festival.

It was all an evil plot by a demon resembling a Hammer horror version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers rolled into one. He aimed to make the townsfolk sing and dance until they spontaneously combusted. "That's entertainment," he suggested.

The cast displayed singing voices ranging from the excellent to the just passable, although the main credit belongs to the imagination of Buffy creator Joss Weldon, who wrote and directed it.

The word "horror" featured in the latest of Secret History's documentaries about the First World War Horror On The Home Front. This was real life horror - the "untold" story of the food shortages, strikes and social unrest.

Archive film and personal testimony told how, when the war began, people believed it would be over by Christmas. At that point, pubs closing early seemed a minor inconvenience. The first taste of reality came in December 1914 with the shelling of Hartlepool, and the first air raids the following year helped break civilian morale.

Food shortages and the real threat of starvation began to achieve what bombing had failed to do - dampen national unity. With overseas supplies cut off, home food production needed to be increased, but farmers - and even their horses - had been among the first to go off to war.

So disabled ex-soldiers went back to the land. "I didn't know how a potato grew, let alone hay-making," recalled George Louth.

Food shortages led to higher prices, hitting the working class hardest. Women did war work, often 12-hour shifts, as well as running the home. Children were sent out to work, with Dennis Feathergill telling how, at the age of nine, he worked 54 hours a week in a jute mill. "I earned a pound and a penny, which was gold in those days," he said.

There was strike action - miners, builders, taxi drivers and even cinema usherettes - and, in the North-East, a reluctance to send children suffering from malnutrition to school. The Durham schools strike led to the promise of free soup kitchens for poor children.

By late 1917, social division and protest were reaching crisis point with rioting and looting. Only then was a national system of rationing introduced, guaranteeing all families supplies of basic food.