Murder City (ITV1); Grand Designs (C4): NOTHING is guaranteed to put a damper on the big day more than a dead woman dropping on the bridegroom from a great height on the eve of the wedding.
The bride is particularly unlucky if she's waving him goodnight when the corpse descends from on high and squashes him to death.
Something nasty was inevitable after the vicar told them after a smiles-and-happiness rehearsal, "That's it, kids, 48 hours from now you'll be playing house."
As well as the death, he never predicted Murder City would return for a second run after the first series failed to set the ratings alight.
Amanda Donohoe and Kris Marshall are mismatched detectives Alembic and Stone, here wondering who killed the women who fell on the bridegroom.
This led them to a club being run as a dating agency for married people. Donohoe's DC Susan Alembic went undercover to investigate and, as TV police officers are wont to do, took her job far too seriously and slept with a suspect.
"You're a detective, not a courtesan," her boss said, although your name didn't have to be Poirot to know that. You only had to read the cast list to find out.
It ended happily enough, for the police if not the jilted bride, and a valuable piece of advice was learnt along the way: "Never trust a man who wrecks marriages for a living".
House design guru Kevin McCloud can be trusted in property matters. He and Grand Designs returned with the building of a new house that proved less traumatic than usual in the series. There were no cash shortages, planning objections or C4 designer poking his nose in to delay the building of Jim and Simone's dream home on an "inspirational location" less than an hour from Glasgow.
This may be because the couple weren't short of a bob or two. Building their "floating" home by a private loch cost them a cool £500,000. McCloud tried to up the suspense by revealing that Jim had an illness brought on by stress. Perhaps he hoped that if he mentioned it enough, Jim would fall ill and be unable to finish the project and make a better TV programme. Alas, that didn't happen.
Planners influenced certain aspects of the exterior, demanding a conservative look to reflect the location, but the couple were able to go design-mad inside their new home with a glass staircase, sauna, Jacuzzi and bathroom with a beautiful view of the countryside.
They spent £20,000 alone on lighting. None of that popping down to BHS to pick up a few lamps and bulbs. They installed 400 lights. No wonder they had 14 men working round the clock to complete the build on schedule.
One interior wall consisted of a massive fish tank. "A nice thing to do if you've got the money," said McCloud. I'm sure there are a few homeless people who could recommend a better use for the cash.
Published: 06/04/2006
