Smart Spenders (BBC1)

THIS is the sort of programme that makes you endorse the order given to the BBC as part of its charter renewal to stop making copycat shows.

Not only is Smart Spenders awful but rips off another BBC series - the one in which Alvin Hall dishes out financial advice - which makes the crime even worse.

Hidden away among daytime TV, Smart Spenders might get away with it. Exposed in the full glare of the peaktime schedules, it's a disgrace.

Money expert and thrift author Jane Furnival was assigned to sort out the finances of Dave and Jane Byrne. The music and the filming angles used to herald her arrival were attempts to turn her into the financial equivalent of fearsome American House Doctor, Ann Maurice.

Jane, though, is plain boring and her advice pretty useless. The only tip I took away was that rubbing your teeth with lemon rind makes them sparkle, and saves £40 a month on professional whitening methods.

Fireman Dave and shopaholic Jane were a hopeless cause. Her shopping trips, love of make-up and cosmetic surgery left her penniless at the end of each month. Dave had even sold his sports car to pay for her boob job. "He's a soft touch," said Jane about Dave, although she might just as well have been referring to her new breasts.

Presenter Jane's solution to stop the other Jane spending was to make her wear a jumper bearing the slogan DON'T SELL THIS WOMAN ANYTHING as a means of curtailing her lunchtime shopping trips. She took away her store card and limited her to two items of toiletries, something that made Jane feel physically sick.

Dave, meanwhile, continued to drive his car instead of keeping his promise to use one of the two unused bicycles in the garage. He persisted in buying pre-prepared meals when making his own would be more economic.

He really didn't enter into the spirit of the economy drive, ridiculing the home-made birthday card given to him by his partner.

A sale of the couple's unwanted goods raised £135 at a car boot sale. By the end of the experiment, presenter Jane claimed to have saved them £600 a month, although the programme offered scant evidence to prove this.

It was too busy showing Jane saving on shampoo by washing her hair in homemade egg shampoo - and ending up with bits of dried egg in her hair. The other Jane, who'd suggested the idea, was left with egg on her face.

My suggestion for the BBC saving a bit of money is simple: don't make any more Smart Spenders programmes.

The King And I,

York Grand Opera House

THIS Rodgers and Hammerstein musical is stuffed with songs that you go in humming and an emotional cross-culture love story. How can it possibly fail given a production as sumptuous and lovingly crafted as this latest touring show?

The musical is based on the story of an English widow, Anna Leonowens, who travelled with her young son to Bangkok to teach the children in the royal household.

There, she and her boss, the despotic King of Siam, learned to appreciate each other's culture and company in between such songs as I Whistle A Happy Tune, Getting To Know You, Shall We Dance and Hello Young Lovers.

All that plus countless adorable children, glittering costumes and a tear-jerking finale that won't leave a dry eye in the house.

Stephen Rayne's glittering production ticks all the right boxes, even if it can't do anything to disguise the fact that the second act, with its Uncle Tom's Cabin ballet and the king's sudden illness for dramatic purposes, goes round in circles looking for an ending to please everyone.

Kevin Gray faces the tough challenge of blotting out Yul Brynner's definitive portrayal of the King, but manages to make the role his own with neat comic timing and a refusal to settle for easy sentimentality.

The "I" of the title, Anna, becomes a slightly looser Englishwoman than the prim widow we usually see in the hands of Elizabeth Renihan, who sings sweetly and engages in a battle of the sexes with the monarch with vigour.

* Until Saturday. Tickets 0870 606 3595. At Sunderland Empire, October 4-15. Box office: 0870 602 1130

Steve Pratt