On TV

ANOTHER week, another ITV1 drama with a child in the central role. After Like Father, Like Son and The Stepfather, which both featured teenagers, the infant in The Baby War was smaller and had a non-speaking role.

But he dribbled and gurgled to perfection as he was tugged this way and that by squabbling would-be parents. Like soap babies, he was the young innocent caught in the middle of a plot that grew increasingly more ludicrous as time progressed and finally became downright potty.

The story probably read better in Peter Whalley's book than in his screenplay, which piled one unlikely event after another in car crash of a narrative.

It all started so well. Lots of tinkly music as assorted relatives arrived at the suburban home of Lauren and James Armstrong to coo over new arrival Adam.

"How are you going to tell him about his true identity?," asked one, just to let us know he was adopted.

"Can his mother change her mind?," asked another, just to alert us to another possibility.

Lurking outside were two Irishmen. As one was the chap who played Brookside's evil Trevor who was buried under the patio, you knew they were up to no good. That was indeed the case. Rather easily you may feel, they walked into the house and stole the baby. One flight in a private jet later and his biological father, high-ranking Irish politician Pierce O'Carroll, was going coochy-coo to the understandably puzzled infant.

He's clearly pleased - the deputy minister not the baby - as he says: "My brother has performed a miracle, the world is a different place to what it was". This seems to be stretching things a bit far and, to some, would indicate his unsuitability to raise a child.

As the adoption hadn't been completed and O'Carroll was the biological father, the Armstrongs were told they faced a long battle to get back baby Adam. Before you could say Dr Spock, Lauren had gone to Ireland and stolen back the baby, aided by the mother who gave him away and her sister, who happens to be engaged to Pierce's brother. Or something like that - it was all too much for me to follow as matters became soapier and soapier, not to mention soppier and soppier.

John Lynch's politician hardly endeared himself to anyone by offering monetary compensation for the inconvenience of taking the baby. Again, are these the sort of morals you want in a father?

Gina McKee looked thoroughly miserable, but I suppose you would if your baby had been kidnapped and you were married to Steven Waddington's boring husband.

Amazingly, despite all the revelations, it all ended reasonably happily and McKee even smiled - by which time I was dribbling with disbelief.

The Lemon Princess, Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

A PLAY about mad cow disease doesn't sound like a bundle of laughs. But tragedy and comedy are closely related and writer Rachael McGill finds plenty of both in The Lemon Princess.

This is partly the story of a family trying to cope with the illness in a 17-year-old girl and partly about a political cover-up, as the government chooses to ignore the risk and keep the facts away from the public.

Like A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg, in which parents faced bringing up a disabled child, director Ruth Carney's production finds laughter among the tears.

Inspired by the real-life plight of a Leeds family whose daughter died from the disease, The Lemon Princess uses the father, a stand-up comic on the pub circuit, to frame the drama.

There's the slow realisation that daughter Becky's increasingly odd behaviour isn't down to PMT or teenage growing pains, followed by a journey to America in search of a cure.

Meanwhile, scientists try to convince ministers that an epidemic is possible. Not only are their opinions ignored but their funding removed and one is even attacked in his lab by a hooded figure. The personal and professional drama is interrupted by scenes from the official BSE inquiry.

Despite occasional lapses into lecturing and being about 15 minutes too long, this is a brave and rewarding drama with the hard-working cast of five (Elaine Glover, Nigel Hastings, Samantha Robinson, Lesley Vickerage and especially Ian Reddington, as father Mike Clayton and the government health minister) filling out dozens of characters.

l Until March 5. Tickets 0113-213 7700.

Steve Pratt