A CARD from a loved one plopping on the mat on a special day is always welcome. Certainly better than what the dog next door puts through the letter box, though goodness knows how he reaches.

Anyway Gail the hamster in Coronation Street (ITV1) isn't happy with the greetings she's been receiving from beyond the grave.

Anniversary, birthday, Mother's Day, give a hamster a home week - you name it and her late serial killer husband Richard Hillman has put his name on a card for it.

Gail's had enough and her latest move sees her join the TV Rodent Hall of Fame in Soapland, alongside other ratty role models Gordon the Gopher and Roland Rat. For Gail turns into Miss Marple, determined to uncover the mystery sender of the Hillman cards. She hasn't been so agitated since someone connected the wheel in her cage to the record player and she started whizzing around at 78rph.

The Platt children try to protect her. When Sarah finds another card signed Richard, she hides it from her already-twitchy mother. Son David is none too pleased when love rat Phil the footman, Gail's most recent squeeze, rings her up He pulls the phone cord out of the socket in disgust, which is a nice thing to do but not much use as she's on the mobile.

Next day Gail returns home to find a card on the table. "Get well soon David, Richard" it reads. Gail scurries round like well, a demented hamster and calls the police. What she calls the police, who don't take her poison pen letters seriously, can't be repeated in a family newspaper.

Gail sets a trap for the mystery writer in a story that's not so much Ultimate Force as Gail Force.

Roy's Rolls, Weatherfield's equivalent to Jamie Oliver's restaurant, gets the all-clear from the health inspector. It's free of rodents now that Gail the hamster has been barred.

You should never cross a hamster (especially with a St Bernard because the result looks like something from a Hammer horror movie but with more drooling) - or factory girl Becky, for that matter. She frames Kelly for theft after being booted out of her house and then tries to snog her boyfriend cabby Lloyd while Kelly is locked in a cell for the night.

Psycho Steph does a spot of gardening in Emmerrdale (ITV1) - she tries to dig up her dead brother Terence, whom she thinks she murdered. It's getting to be a habit as she previously pushed Shelly off a ferry.

Little does she know that Doctor Adam - that's Doctor as in Crippen not Kildare - is a bit of a psycho too.

He's the actual killer and has taken to drugging Steph so he can turn events to his advantage. Perhaps he's the one sending birthday cards to Gail in Corrie. He's certainly twisted enough. But nowhere near as complicated as Terry Woods' love life.

Having been married to Dawn, he's now sleeping with her mother. So his former mother-in-law could soon be his wife and his former wife could be his daughter-in-law. I'm unsure where that leaves Terry and Dawn's son TJ, apart from very confused.

In EastEnders (BBC1), Grunt Mitchell does a runner. The Mitchell bruvver hasn't been the same since he returned from Sarf America a softer, gentler soul who now only beats up Ian Beale if there's an 'r' in the month.

He's upset when daughter Courtney demands to know if he killed her mother Tiffany. He's innocent of that - you may recall Frank Butcher mowed her down in his car - but not of treating Tiffany like dirt by sleeping with her mother, pushing Tiff down the stairs and refusing to believe he was Courtney's father. Other than that he's been a perfect father.