My Life as a Child (BBC2) The Real No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (BBC2) - Putting children on television is often a route to cheap laughs, but it's easy to overlook how they can be astute as well as cute.

And if ever there was proof that children can be more perceptive than we sometimes give them credit for, then My Life as a Child provided it.

The first in a six-part series gave digital cameras to three children with absent fathers. It could have been mawkish, but turned out to be fascinating, insightful, and, at times, desperately sad.

"My mum and dad got divorced when I was three years old. It is heartbreaking, I know," said eight-year-old Ellen matter-of-factly. Her dad lived in Japan with his new girlfriend. She missed him terribly, made worse because she didn't get on with her step-dad. "I have photographs of my dad all over the place. Well, two," she said. "That's all I need, really."

Nine-year-old Kris went to visit his Turkish dad, his baba, in Istanbul. His parentage meant he was teased at school, but Kris was proud of his dad and tried to learn Turkish before he went. But when he got there, his baba, who took two days off work to be with his son, embarrassed him by talking about girlfriends all the time. The second day, his baba didn't turn up. Kris's disappointment was heartbreaking, and his determination not to show it made it even worse.

But it was nine-year-old Mary who provided the most astute observations. She lived with her two brothers and a mum who suffered from depression. The family went to Portugal to visit Mary's dad, now living with a new girlfriend. At first, the holiday went swimmingly, then the competition for her dad's affections between his past and present lover became too much, and they came home.

"My mum hasn't learned that important thing, that dad doesn't love her," said Mary. "I'm going to have to try and get her to learn it."

The Real No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency must have seemed a brilliant idea at the planning stage: discover the real version of a fictional phenomenon. Imagine if there were a real school for wizards, what a documentary that would make. Now, if only there were a real African detective agency run by women...

But the attempt to translate Alexander McCall Smith's best-selling novels about African detective Precious Ramotswe suffered from a fatal flaw: the life of a private detective is actually very boring. Not so much solving murders and catching international jewel thieves, as looking for stolen maize and trying to catch a suspected adulterer.

It only really threatened to get interesting when it left the detecting behind and looked at the lives of the Zambian women who staffed the agency. The frustrations of everyday life, including the shortage of fuel and lack of spare tyres, the poverty and the spread of Aids, would have made an absorbing film, if only the premise had been stronger.

Published: 06/07/2005