Life Begins (ITV1); Driving Mum And Dad Mad (ITV1): WITH the Caroline Quentin series Life Begins emerging as one of last year's biggest ratings winners, ITV1 wasn't going to let it go away.

Time will tell whether audience figures remain high but, on the evidence of the second series opener, writer Mike Bullen has plenty of potential in extending the story without seeming overstretched.

We're now over the initial trauma of Maggie's life falling to pieces after her husband betrayed her, leaving her with two children and a home to run.

As well as a fretting husband - with no girlfriend and soon no job - forever turning up on the doorstep, she also has assorted family and friends with their own catalogue of problems. There's an awful lot going on, so much so that some characters get left out in the cold with nothing to do.

Quentin continues to face each fresh crisis with a smile and quip. When she arrives late to work announcing, "A death in family", she's talking about her clapped-out car not a flesh-and-blood relative.

She has two children approaching the age where they became difficult. She has a mother for whom the word "interfering" was made and a father losing his mind through illness, with Frank Finlay providing a poignant interlude as he vividly described to schoolchildren how he killed a man in the Korean War. "I can't remember a shopping list and can't forget the things I want to," he said.

Bullen is able to insert dramatic, affecting scenes in the middle of a series that rejoices in funny lines, ironic lines and comic scenes such as travel agency boss Jeff's attempts to improve his management skills.

Much fun was had at the arrival of a new woman at the travel agency where Maggie works. Whenever she picked up a call for Maggie from one of the family, she'd shout out as she transferred it, "Maggie, line two, personal call".

Half-a-dozen other mini-stories were established, ready to be developed and criss-cross over Maggie's own life problems in coming weeks.

Her life is positively calm compared to that of parents with out-of-control children in the scary Driving Mum And Dad Mad. Before clinical psychologist Professor Matt Sanders got down to the business of retraining the exhausted mums and dads, we were subjected to footage of their hellish home life. It was not a pretty sight with tantrums, screaming, shouting, punching, kicking and swearing. And that was only the children, who make the wayward teenagers in Brat Camp look like little angels.

To the outsider, it's obvious the youngsters have realised that if they scream and shout, they'll get their own way and probably a reward as well. Their parents are too blinkered to see that until the Prof points it out.

He reckons that in five sessions he can retrain parents. From what we've seen so far, he's got his work cut out.

Published: 17/02/2005