Never mind watching this state of a show

"WHAT if he's playing you like a violin?," someone inquired of forensic psychologist Grace in State Of Mind. We all know that many a good tune is played on an old fiddle - although I don't expect Niamh Cusack, the actress playing Grace, would much like being compared to a fiddle of any kind - but Paula Milne's two-part thriller was decidedly off-key.

The cops were worried that suspected wife murderer Julian (Andrew Lincoln, in glasses and a serious voice) was playing mind games with less-than-amazing Grace in order to convince her that he'd accidentally killed his adulterous wife during a blackout.

The murder itself was one of the nastiest seen for some time, as the woman was pinned against a metal garage door by a car running into her at great speed. The drama itself was pretty grisly too as Grace's troubled domestic life was mirrored by the case.

Grave doubts were cast on her ability to get inside people's minds when she only twigged her husband was cheating after he named his mistress in his sleep. And Grace's way of dealing with young son Adam when dad left home was to tell him, "If your life is a cake, only one piece has gone".

The mind games played in the reality game show The Honey Trap - a sort of Candid Camera with knobs on - concerned libido-led lads on holiday in Ibiza. Three not-unattractive young ladies picked up a bunch of lusty lads, took them to their parents' villa, and made increasingly outrageous demands of the males to see how far they'd go to impress them.

The carrot dangling on the end of the stick was nooky rather than Chris Tarrant's million quid. Hidden cameras recorded the every move of guys "with their brains firmly in their shorts" when the girls were out of eye and earshot. This was cheap and trashy but, unlike State Of Mind, the programme didn't try to be anything else.

The lads were asked to move logs, put on a pink thong, leave a restaurant without paying, and endure the limp-wristed attention of the girls' gay uncle. They had to gut a trout and get in touch with their feminine side, although clearly they wanted to get in touch with someone else's feminine side.

We were assured that "no boys were harmed in the making of this programme". In fact, they got a free holiday in return for being humiliated on TV as we saw they would lie, cheat and steal if they thought there are a grope at the end of the day. Even Grace might have come to that conclusion.