The Brides In The Bath (ITV1): WHAT did you do on New Year's Eve? I watched that chap who used to be in EastEnders drown a woman in the bath. And then another woman. And then another. And then another...

Yes, it does sound a bit monotonous, doesn't it? This account of bathtime with George Joseph Smith couldn't escape the fact that his method of killing was unpleasant but that once you've seen one naked woman thrashing around gurgling "glug, glug, glug" as he held her under the bathwater, you've seen them all.

Writer Glenn Chandler wasn't able to introduce any of the bloody and gruesome killings that were the hallmark of the episodes he wrote for Taggart, the Glasgow-set detective series he created.

Having Edwardian serial murderer Smith played by former EastEnders actor Martin Kemp didn't help. He's an actor with one basic expression. Making him wear a moustache and straw boater didn't improve it.

Despite all the care and detail that had gone into recreating the Edwardian era for the two-hour TV film, this remained a curiously unengrossing drama.

One longed for the re-appearance of Richard Griffiths as defence barrister Sir Edward Marshall-Hall to liven things up. He was not best pleased to be representing Smith, partly, you suspected, as he was being paid out of the Poor Prisoners' Defence Fund.

He didn't appear to have much belief in his client's innocence. Sir Edward said he felt "like a man about to open an oyster with a pin" as he set about defending him in court.

Smith changed his name whenever he married a new victim but his modus operandi remained the same. Almost before the ceremony was over, he whisked his latest bride to the doctor on the pretext that she was ill and needed medication. A few days later she drowned in the bath as a result of this alleged illness, leaving Smith to spend her money.

Any clothes or jewellery he took back to be sold in the shop run by his real wife Edith (Tracey Wilkinson, on leave from Bad Girls). "You are the only woman I ever loved," he told her, which was true in a way as he never seemed to have time for hanky-panky with his other wives/victims.

When he went to view new lodgings, he didn't ask about the furnishings or the heating. His first question was always, "Is there a bath?" Imagine his horror when one of his eight wives declared: "I don't like baths, I don't believe in them."

He was having none of it, instigating a rare case of a marital row over bathtime habits. "You are my wife. If I tell you to have a hot bath, you will have a hot bath," he shouted.

There was macabre fun to be had watching a procession of baths being brought into the courtroom for judge and jury to inspect. And a particularly nice moment when water dripping through the ceiling from an overflowing bath upstairs splashed onto a newspaper bearing a story about the execution of another serial killer, Dr Crippen.

Published: 01/01/2004