On TV

Gardens Through Time (BBC2)

HOTELIER Tim Hadcock-Mackay believes that order is everything and that the key to a happy, productive life is organisation.

Shellie, in her own way, has organised her life - husband Ray is at her beck and call. He wastes 63.7 working days a year making her tea and spends 90 per cent of his day doing household chores.

We got an idea of the extent of Shellie's laziness when she was in the bedroom and picked up the telephone and ordered Ray, who was downstairs in the living room, to bring her a cup of tea.

He was, it appeared to any outsider, little more than a personal slave. He was, he said, up and down the stairs like a pair of prostitute's knickers.

We were supposed to believe all this, although watching too many shows like Wife Swap and How Clean Is Your House makes you wonder how much is real and how much is staged. Did Shellie really have a whistle which she blew when wanting to give her husband a fresh order?

"You're not being serious," said Hadcock-Mackay, on observing the routine in the house. Daughter Trixie was equally lazy, as a time and motion study showed.

Hadock-Mackay set about organising the family, giving each of them a timetable to be followed. Shellie was enticed into doing housework by being told the number of calories she would lose, although as she took 90 minutes to cook her first English breakfast, Ray risked starvation. He was freed from cooking and cleaning to finish off the DIY jobs he'd neglected, while Trixie was made to do her GCSE homework.

"She's done well," said Hadcock-Mackay. Rather too well, I thought. Shellie buckled down to the housework far too easily. I bet she put her feet up as soon as the cameras had left.

Gardener Diamuid Gavin had his work cut out in the first of the Gardens Through Time series, marking 200 years of gardening in Britain. The series aims to create gardens from seven eras, beginning with The Regency Garden, circa 1804-1837.

There was something a bit like the classroom the way Gavin, and particularly co-presenter Jane Owen, kept regaling us with facts and figures. But I suppose you never know when it might come in handy to know that apples aid digestion and cherries help genital infections.

Still, the programme did offer the sight of Gavin chopping up a barrel of dead fish to use as fertiliser. They used to do this in the Regency period. Whole carcasses of dogs, horses and deer were also allowed to decompose to make a rich manure.

You couldn't help feeling sorry for Gavin as he prepared his dead fish manure on the hottest day of the year. Thank goodness TV sets don't come with the ability to reproduce smells. It might have put you off eating fish for good.

Hamlet, Newcastle Theatre Royal

THE Royal Shakespeare Company makes a welcome return to Newcastle, and this production of Hamlet played to a packed and appreciative house.

Performed entirely on an amazingly versatile circular set and accompanied by talented percussionists, the play is as absorbing, surprising and entertaining as we've come to expect from the RSC.

Toby Stephens is excellent as the eponymous Prince of Denmark, by turns furious, scheming and desperate to prove that his uncle Claudius has poisoned Hamlet's father and married the widowed Queen Gertrude to become King himself. Stephens has a light touch with the dry humour Hamlet displays in between lurching from crisis to crisis.

There are strong performances from Sian Thomas as Gertrude, crying real tears in the face of Hamlet's tirade about her marriage so soon after her husband's death, and Meg Fraser as Ophelia, chilling as she sings her songs of madness.

Clive Wood is a dangerous, powerful Claudius, riveting as he watches the play arranged by Hamlet and it begins to dawn on him that he's seeing a reconstruction of his murder of the old king. Greg Hicks plays the dour gravedigger to perfection, but as the ghost of the poisoned king he is just superb. Every movement conveys his agony as he moves slowly through the auditorium, dragging a massive sword. The moment when he opens his mouth to speak is spine-chilling. It's a lengthy performance at three-and-a half hours, but well worth it.

l Runs until Saturday. Booking Office: 0870 905 5060

Sue Heath

John Otway, The Arc, Stockton

IF there were any justice in the world, John Otway would have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when he scored a top ten hit with Bunsen Burner two years ago - 25 years after hitting the top 30 in 1977, when punk was at its commercial peak.

Alas, one of the greatest rockers ever will merely go down as a footnote in the popular music history books, despite bringing the world such masterpieces as Really Free and Beware of the Flowers ('Cos I'm sure They're Going To Get You).

While bands re-form for the quick buck, hardworking Otway has never left the scene. Minus his backing band, he appeared with punk poet and left-wing firebrand Attila The Stockbroker. A joint rendition of Two Little Boys was followed by the pair performing their respective songs and poetry, with Attila paying tribute to the late greats John Peel and Joe Strummer.

Never a spokesperson for the politicised punk generation, Otway's anarchic shows comprise self-parody and fun, but above all his music is first class. Otway's songwriting ability has always been underestimated and, between comic versions of other people's tunes, his own beautiful songs like Cheryl's Going Home still shine like diamonds. The duo spent the second half performing their opera about the aforementioned Cheryl, involving a jilted trainspotter stranded on a railway station, Satanism, drug abuse, holiday timeshares and other wild and weird machinations from Otway's brilliant mind. Magnificent!

Ed Waugh