Fur coats and no knickers

It's all the fault of Jennifer Lopez. Women no longer yearn for Kylie's pert behind or to emulate whippet-hipped models. They want a voluptuous J-Lo style bottom.

"Downstairs you have all the good bits," it was suggested, and some women want to make them even better. Never mind, "Does my bum look big in this?". More, "Does my bum look big enough in this?".

Kili was willing to pay $12,000 for butt-augmentation surgery. She was able to get a bigger bum by using surplus fat from elsewhere in her body. Not so much losing a beer gut as gaining a big butt.

The bottoms in Bootylicious were clad in thongs or nothing at all, unlike those in TV costume drama land which are hidden beneath yards and yards of material. And this was a big weekend for the genre with not one, but two major adaptations starting out.

Dr Zhivago and Daniel Deronda had much in common, apart from both being adapted by the prolific Andrew Davies. He's taken liberties with the text, but nothing like the liberties taken with the main female characters.

Funnily enough, both these women are being pursued by two men, one good and one bad. Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda needs a chap, preferably a rich one, after the family fortune dries up.

Does she opt for good-looking Dan, Dan, the decent young man? Not on your life. She weds Henleigh Grandcourt, whose very name suggests a stately home rather than a suitor. One look at Lush, his toadying PA, and most girls would run a mile.

I can confidently predict it will end in tears. Dr Zhivago already has, and we've only seen one of the three episodes. At least, young Yuri takes one look at Count Victor Komarovsky and declares: "I don't like that man."

He's a shrewd judge of character, despite his tender years. When he grows up, not long after the opening titles, he's a doctor and a poet, who's as capable of performing an impromptu tracheotomy as dashing off a few rhyming couplets.

For Yuri and young Lara, it's love at first sight as she gazes at the cakes in the window of the teashop where he's drinking inside. All the same, she's out for the Count. He's her mother's boyfriend, but Lara believes in keeping it in the family.

Both series look a million dollars, although they obviously cost rather more. Rarely has TV drama looked so ravishing. The acting never quite reaches the same heights.

The baddies steal the acting honours in both. Beneath the civilised exterior of Hugh Bonneville's Grandcourt lurks a heart of stone, while Sam Neill's Komarovsky uses charm to cover his wicked, wicked ways.

Hugh Darcy's Deronda and Hans Matheson's Zhivago ("I will be a doctor for others and a poet for myself") are no match for them, partly because they're men of thought not men of action. Neither Romola Garai's scheming Gwendolen and Kiera Knightley's teenage Lara have yet to work their way into my heart.

Both series are stuffed with familiar faces, too often given very little to do apart from stand there and be recognised. Then again, perhaps there's an unwritten rule that Celia Imrie has to appear in every new TV drama series.