Judge John Deed (BBC1) Shameless (C4) : I managed 30 minutes of Judge John Deed before my finger hit the STOP button. It was the line "Do you have sex with Mrs Mills?" that finally did it for me.

I had a vision of Martin Shaw's bumptious, obnoxious legal eagle in flagrante delicto with that rather jolly lady named Mrs Mills who used to bang out tunes on the piano in the 1960s. This was grossly unfair as Mrs M is played in the series by the delightful Jenny Seagrove (who may, or may not, be a whizz at the keys).

Deed is the man for whom all those legal jokes about taking down briefs were invented. Women fall into his arms at the drop of a wig. No sooner has he arrived in his hotel in The Hague - where he's to sit at war crime trials - than the red-headed female chief prosecutor is knocking at the door, wanting to do the dirty Deed.

"Would you like to make love?" she asks, after demanding to know if his bodyguard is a lesbian.

"That would be very nice," he replies politely.

Earlier, Deed and two other senior judges (played with much jaw-quivering by Donald Sinden and Simon Ward) sit around deliberating in a scene that resembled a Monty Python sketch rather than serious drama.

But just to let you know that the series has a conscience, there's a case involving a British soldier who has shot 11 people, including children, in Basra. This leads to much talk about the Government's exit strategy, which seems as real as those much-debated weapons of mass destruction.

Judge John seems more interested in an entry strategy and getting into the knickers of anything female with a pulse - and I don't mean a woman shopping for lentils. Is there a TV character more pompous, more worth punching in the face, more deserving of being locked in a small room with Jade's mum Jackiey than Judge John Deed? The answer, I would contend m'lud, is in the negative.

Give me the bawdy antics of Shameless any time. Life on the Chatsworth Estate in Manchester is never dull with its residents full of unusual stories, including one about being hit by a flying beach hut in Brighton, and interesting people, such as lazy-eyed shelf stackers (which isn't easy to say after a few drinks).

David Threlfall's magnificent reprobate Frank Gallagher zigzags drunkenly around from one crisis to the next. As he's setting himself on fire while cooking the dinner, son Lip is getting a birthday present from his girlfriend's family - a knuckleduster.

Even worse, the family move in next door to the Gallaghers after neighbours Kevin and Veronica (who'll be much missed) are arrested for buying a baby from a Romanian orphanage.

As if the Gallagher family didn't have enough problems with the return of Frank's first wife whom he forgot to divorce before marrying mad Maggie. He has a love life nearly as complicated as Judge John.