Home (BBC2) True CSI (five) : Home is no longer where the hearth is. Once, the hearth was the heartbeat of family life as home life revolved around the flickering fireside.

By the mid-1990s, only eight per cent of households had a working fireplace while 99 per cent owned a television set.

Family life now centred around a different kind of flickering installation. Now, the TV set is giving way to the plasma screen and, proof that if you wait long enough things come back into fashion, the hearth is considered a sexy selling point.

I'm indebted to the BBC's new magazine show Home for this information. In the opening episode, they were in the living room - or front room or sitting room, if you prefer. This is where we put our personality on public display and, viewing the homes on display here, I feel someone should examine the heads of those responsible for the decor.

Tastes differ, I know, but the Nelems' two-bedroom flat in Lancashire really is an eyeful decorated as it is in the baroque and rococo style. Mr Nelems wanted to make a palace for his wife. He admitted he was a self-taught artist, although you might have guessed this from looking at the over-the-top-and-far-away decoration where the chandelier was, as he put it, "the icing on the ceiling".

His wife has come round to her husband's decorative ideas. "Luckily I liked it and have become a baroque enthusiast over the years," she said. "I think it's unique. I don't know anyone who has a little palace like mine."

At least, the couple brought Home down to earth. Much of it was concerned with decoration that's out of most people's price range, like the £5,000 light in Layla's newly-decorated living room.

Her interior designer told us that "spending other people's money is very nice". Getting her to design and build a house from scratch would set you back between £2.5m and £6m. Presumably you get more than a cardboard box with a chandelier for your money.

I wouldn't give house room to most of the decoration seen in Home. And the series suffers from a fatal design flaw - it tries to do much and ends up being too busy, like some of the wall coverings on view.

True CSI is the real life version of those glossy American CSI series. Dead In The Water, which probed the recovery of a fully-clothed body from the sea off the South coast, resembled a 1950s British crime thriller more than up-to-date thriller.

It was obvious to me that the victim had been thrown off a yacht attached to the anchor on account of his poor taste in knitwear. He must have offended public decency every time he set foot outside. The case itself was not without interest as it involved fraud, false identities, a man apparently fathering children by his daughter and a Rolex watch used to identify the corpse.

Unfortunately, the policemen came over as real PC Plods and the prime suspect as an actor who'd been turned down for a role in Dixon Of Dock Green.

A Bed Full of Foreigners, The Customs House, South Shields

THREE weeks after the main auditorium was temporarily closed to replace the ageing lighting rig, The Customs House opened its doors again with this farcical comedy. Farce is described as essential theatre by some critics, but if it's not done well it can be a tedious and predictable affair.

Due to technical problems, the show started ten minutes late and the first half didn't seem to redeem the audience's display of faith by hanging around. It was a slightly disappointing affair; at times very slow, and although this amounted to plot-building for the second half, there weren't enough funny moments to really get the pulse racing.

But what a difference an interval makes. The second half was a riotous, rip-roaring 60 minutes where the crowd doubled over with laughter.

Damien Williams' performance throughout was one of the best the Mill Dam venue will ever see. His facial expressions and superb ad-libbing were a joy to watch and he was excellently backed by a support cast that included former Crossroads star Lynette McMorrough.

The highlight of the play was the side-splitting striptease scene with Kate Burrell's character Simone and that sequence alone turned a comedy into pure farce.

The run ends tonight.

Box Office: 0191-454 1234

Keir Waugh