Hollywood Greats: Doris Day (BBC1)

THE skimpiness of this biography of Doris Day is illustrated by the fact that presenter Jonathan Ross stated she married for a fourth time and that the union was "shortlived" without bothering to mention the name of her husband.

What we saw was some old foggy footage of Day herself (apparently shot through a Vaseline-smeared lens), talking heads saying how wonderful she was, and clips from her movies. It told us little we didn't already know - notably that her happy-ever-after screen life was not reflected in her off-screen life - or couldn't discover from reference books.

She was said to be sexy, intelligent, funny and strong but with abominable taste in men. At 17, she married a trombone player who held a loaded gun to her pregnant stomach after she annoyed him. Husband number two was a saxophone player - and a musical pattern seemed to be developing, only for her to take her agent Marty Melcher as hubby number three.

After his death, she discovered that her fortune had gone and he'd committed her to making a TV series without her knowledge. No wonder after brief marriage number four, she devoted herself to working for animal welfare and opening a hotel where guests are welcome to bring their dogs. A canine companion is obviously this woman's best friend.

Most intriguing was a clip from the film Love Me Or Leave Me in which she played a singer whose husband lives off his wife's success. "Have you done one successful thing on your own?" she asked of her screen husband. The parallels with her real husband were not lost.

Everyone had nice things to say about Day. She was everything that was wonderful about America. She had bouncy blonde hair. She was chirpy, pretty and had great teeth (which made her sound like a cross between a horse and a bird).

When her career declined in the late 1950s, she revived it with a series of romantic comedies opposite Rock Hudson. We now know that he preferred men to women in real life. Day refused to be drawn on his homosexuality, claiming - and you may find this hard to believe - that she'd never known anything about his private life.

Day said that Calamity Jane, whom she played in the movie musical Western, "is the real me". As Jane was a butch tomboy who was quick on the draw and liked a drink or three, it would have been rewarding if Hollywood Greats had pursued this line rather than let it pass without further investigation.