Born And Bred (BBC1): "IT'S a good thing Tom's coming back tomorrow," they kept saying in the small Lancashire village of Ormiston throughout the first episode of the new series.

Those familiar with dramas like Born And Bred will have recognised that words like this translate as Tom's not coming back tomorrow, or any other day.

Eagerly awaiting the return of a regular character can only mean that the opposite will happen because (a) the actor playing the role has left the series or (b) the producers have decided to boost ratings by killing off a popular character.

Dr Tom's failure to return home from visiting relatives in New Zealand isn't the only change. The 1950s-set Born And Bred has been evicted from its comfy Sunday evening slot and moved into the bright lights of Wednesday peaktime. I fear it may not survive among the more aggressive dramas and reality TV overload of the weekday schedules.

An awful lot happens despite Ormiston giving the impression of being a sleepy sort of place. Or not, in the case of newlyweds Eddie and Jean, who are finding living with her stationmaster father Wilf is cramping their style in the bedroom.

"This isn't a marriage, it's an exercise in frustration," fumed Eddie as he suffered another instance of coitus interruptus.

All the tension left him unable to perform and with a keen interest in trains. "The 1.13 from Manchester waits 20 minutes in the station and becomes the 1.33 to Cleethorpes," said Eddie. Those 20 minutes meant Wilf couldn't leave the station, thus leaving the coast clear for a spot of nooky.

They decided to move out of the house and into a room in the pub. Eddie dreaded telling Wilf of their plans. "Just stand firm, whatever he says," Jean advised her husband, who wouldn't have needed to move if he had taken a firm stand in the first place.

It emerged that father Wilf had been deliberately keeping the couple apart to win a bet that his daughter wouldn't get in the family way.

Fathers got a bad press all round. Widower William kept his teenage son and daughter, Abel and Amy, under lock and key. "He's not a father, he's a jailer," declared Abel.

The new doctor arrived on a motorbike to organise a walk-in blood bank, which sounds like somewhere Count Dracula would have an account. It was handy once it was revealed that Abel was a haemophiliac, or perhaps people called him a little bleeder for other reasons.

Seeing Richard Wilson in a white coat - as Ormiston's Dr Donald Newman - made me worry for the locals' health so soon after the actor played another medic in the most recent Doctor Who story, where he turned into a gas mask-wearing zombie.

Mothers too were put in their place. Deborah, Dr Tom's soon-to-be-widow, took far too much interest in other people's affairs, according to her daughter. "We're supposed to be your job, not the hospital," she was told.

Published: 02/06/2005