The real face of a writer and a fake musician

When Jane Austen's first novel was published in 1811, the name of the author was given only as A Lady as it was not considered proper for a woman to make a living out of writing in those days. She was supposed to find a husband to keep her in the custom to which she wished to become accustomed.

But, at 27, Austen was both unmarried and unpublished. She wrote about courtship rather than participated in the ritual. The Real Jane Austen did much to find the relationship between the writer's personal life and her characters.

Actress Anna Chancellor presented this enlightening documentary about her great-aunt which mixed "interviews" with Austen and those who knew her, excerpts from dramatisations of her work, and reconstructions of her home life.

As she didn't keep a diary and many of her letters were burned, pinpointing whether she lived like her heroines wasn't easy. There's even debate about her looks as only one portrait, by her sister Cassandra, exists. Descriptions of her by those who knew her differ wildly, although everyone agreed on her intelligence, an asset not considered good for a woman in those days.

A shy child, she discovered the world of the imagination and had the run of her father's extensive library, from which she borrowed steamy novels about sex and seduction such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.

Struck by the mercenary nature of husband-hunting, she wrote about the marriage market in books like Pride And Prejudice. After being rejected by a handsome young Dubliner (who went on to became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland), young Jane threw herself into her writing.

Rejection also featured strongly in Faking It, in which Chris, pink-haired lead singer in a Leeds punk band called Dead Pets, attempted to become a classical orchestra conductor in four weeks.

As he couldn't read music, play a musical instrument and had never heard of Rossini (whose work he would conduct), this was never going to be easy. But, despite a reluctance to rise before noon, his tuition wasn't going too badly until he learnt that, in his absence, his girlfriend of six years had left him.

Her timing couldn't have been worse - just before he stood up in front of 1,500 people to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a young conductors' competition.

Her desertion - an unforgivable act of meanness as she might at least have waited until after his big day - added an extra emotional dimension to an already-heated relationship between Chris and his long-suffering tutors.

He acquitted himself well in the contest and, although he didn't fool the judges, you couldn't help feeling that he scored a personal victory.

The faking in The Giant Claw involved the Walking With Dinosaurs team creating a succession of computer-generated dinosaurs to menace presenter Nigel Marven on his prehistoric safari.

The result was great fun as he fled from velociraptors, caught a dinosaur (only a small one) and looked for the creature that had left behind a 28in long claw.

And a dinosaur sneezed on him. "I don't believe it, dinosaur snot," he said, wiping it from his face. That sort of thing never happens to David Attenborough.