The O.C. (C4); Casualty (BBC1); Waking The Dead (BBC1): THE fall of The OC has been both rapid and unexpected.

One minute, the US teen series was the hottest thing on TV. The next it appeared audiences had OD-ed on The OC with the network delivering the KO blow by cancelling it.

I find it difficult not to endorse their decision as this third series is proving a real turn-off. Killing off Marissa, the stick-thin heroine, at the end of series two isn't the problem. The writers have simply lost the plot. They spend so much time going round in circles, narratively speaking, that they're too dizzy to write sensibly.

For almost-reformed tearaway Ryan, being an angry young man is a full-time occupation. "I'm not angry, I just wish he was dead," he says of the chap who killed his on-off love Marissa in a hit-and-run.

Not that the series lets you forget it has a conscience. Summer - the girl, not the season - worries about Thanksgiving dinner with "millions of turkeys being senselessly slaughtered so Americans can get fatter".

Symbolic of the series' decline, the marvellous Julie Cooper-Nichol (who adds the surname of each new husband to her name instead of carving notches on the bedpost) is walking around miserably wondering how to cook a turkey instead of being how we love her - bitchy, glamorous and seeking a rich husband.

The irritating Taylor - the girl, not the suit-maker - has fetched up at the Cohen's house having married and swiftly left a Frenchman during the holidays. She says he's sexy, well-endowed and stubborn. But she wants an annulment all the same.

Julie, still wrestling with the turkey, doesn't like the cute homeless dog that her daughter has brought home. "Get that out of my house or I'll have it put down," she screams. The studio, of course, has already decided to put The OC out of its misery.

A visit to Casualty reveals plot twists worthy of a soap. Harry's been suspended (by his privates probably, for sexual harassment) and hospital boss Nathan has been visiting brothels. His secret is out because he was spotted by nurse Kelsey, who's been moonlighting as a prostitute.

This is bad news for Nathan who's just proposed marriage to Dr Selena. Kelsey needs to repay a loan quickly and blackmails him for three grand. "You wouldn't want your little peccadillo exposed - and I have heard it's quite small," she tells him.

Dr Selena is still deciding whether to accept Nathan's hand (and his little pec-ker) in marriage despite claiming, when those around her seem shocked that she's even considering such a move, that "away from here, he's kind, gentle and very sexy".

She finally says yes after driving a woman obsessed with a stroke victim to commit suicide. I hope she never has to treat me.

In Waking The Dead, following the release of a killer from a psychiatric detention centre after 20 years, the wallets of his victims are sent through the post to relatives. Even cold case boss Boyd (Trevor Eve) is prompted to ask "what's going on?", a question regularly posed by viewers.

But forensic expert Eve Lockhart is in her element prising open wallets sealed with blood and analysing the contents. Perhaps she'd like to do an autopsy on The OC to find the cause of death.