On TV

THOSE people at ITV seem to have a fatal fascination with the case of Britain's most prolific serial killer, Dr Harold Shipman. The channel's already screened a dramatisation with James Bolam as the man who murdered several hundred, maybe as many as 500, of his patients.

Now comes To Kill And Kill Again, a 90-minute documentary using the testimony of former patients, friends, detectives and previously-unseen video of his police interviews. There was certainly something unnerving watching old footage of Shipman talking about a new approach to mental health in a TV documentary.

This is a compelling crime story that's both chilling and fascinating at the same time. The participation of the relatives of victims seems to indicate that many don't mind raking over the case once more.

The programme did much to get inside Shipman's twisted mind, tracing matters back to his mother's slow and painful death from lung cancer when he was 17. Her only relief was daily, afternoon injections of morphine. It was no coincidence that Shipman chose to give fatal injections of the same drug to his victims at that time of day.

His mother's death prompted him to take up medicine as a career. He met his future wife Primrose on a bus going to lectures. They married when she became pregnant halfway through his medical training.

Damaged in his childhood, he became psychologically isolated and addicted to pethidine. What may have started as mercy killings turned into a compulsion to kill mainly elderly people. What was amazing was that the former Nottingham grammar school boy managed to get away with it for so long. He did that by moving around and altering his patients' records.

Some people did harbour suspicions. A local taxi driver started making a list of his clients who were also Shipman's patients and died at home. A local funeral director was concerned at the number of bodies that came from Shipman.

By the time he was single-handedly running a surgery, he had 3,000 patients on his books and a waiting list. "They were desperate to get in, they were queuing up to be murdered," someone recalled.

The Lindsays, The Sage Gateshead

The Lindsays' residency at The Sage Gateshead is in full stride, attracting capacity audiences eager to enjoy the last opportunity to see the quartet in action before they disband. They are performing all of Beethoven's and Sir Michael Tippett's string quartets, in the celebration of the centenary of the latter's birth. The latest concert picked up on no. 6 of Beethoven's op. 18, said to be the composer's anticipation of the Jazz Age.

Certainly, the Lindsays worked its dazzling passages to the full, setting the scene for Tippett's Quartet No 1. The first movement was driven forward with brilliant bowing, led by Peter Cropper, while the slow second movement oozed deeply burnished tones. The second half was devoted to Beethoven's String Quartet in C Sharp minor op. 131. The Lindsays' interpretation was superlative. They laid out the first movement unhurriedly, lovingly moulding its overlapping phrases to take the work to stellar heights. They have played this work countless times in their career but it is a familiarity that has bred, if anything, an awe for the score. There was no sense of complacency, as they pushed the work to its limit with a nervy energy.

The dialogue between players was instinctive and sharply articulated and the pizzicato passages were tossed around with ease. The slow movement was simply sublime and the allegro searing. As the audience filed out more than one person could be heard humming or whistling the last jaunty tune. It made a deep impression. There is more of the same at 7.30pm tonight, with three more concerts to go. Box Office: 0870 703 4555.

Gavin Engelbrecht

Lemon Jelly, The Sage, Gateshead

WATCHING Lemon Jelly is like seeing a familiar face in the crowd that you can't quite place. The kind of chilled out dance sound the group has perfected is best suited to late night, after house parties when, if you're not a little worse for wear, then you soon will be. So listening to those blissfully dreamy melodies and infectious dance beats, you feel sure you've heard them before but can't say exactly where.

On stage at The Sage, musical duo Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen also seem oddly familiar. The pair bound around like a couple of affable young lads who've been asked to DJ at their mate's party. They're refreshingly uncool and eager to please, which is a blessed relief in a pop culture suffocated by image obsession.

They say things like "Crikey, this is a nice!" on noticing their grand surroundings and affect comedy moon walks.

Their music is equally playful and eccentric - one of their best-known tracks is called Nice Weather for Ducks - but silliness can only get you so far and lest we forget, Lemon Jelly possess a genuine talent.

They mix quirky samples and scratches together with lush melodies to create music that is fun and soulful. Seeing these two scruffy and slightly apologetic DJs bounce out, it looks like it can't work, but then as you soon discover there is much, much more to Lemon Jelly than meets the eye.

Paul Willis