On TV

The Crouches (BBC1)

ER (C4)

TOP cop Clare Blake is having a bad day in Lynda La Plante's thriller The Commander. The murderer with whom she had a much-publicised affair has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The sister of one victim is stalking her. And Blake's own sister has moved into her flat as she battles terminal cancer.

You'd think that Commander Blake would have more sense than to sleep with the boyfriend of one of her team, even if he is a computer whiz - and she's badly in need of one of those because someone has hacked into hospital computers and is busy doctoring patients' files.

A man with a severe nut allergy has this information removed from his file and dies after being given a nutty pudding. Another patient is given penicillin, to which she's allergic, and dies too.

I'd like to think that Blake's mind is on her job, but that doesn't look to be the case. As she's played by Amanda Burton, it's difficult to tell exactly what's she thinking from her permanently pained expression, although she's slightly more animated than her Silent Witness pathologist, who was a cold as the corpses she cut up.

"We'll beat this together," she assures her sick sister, although you know perfectly well that Blake will be too distracted by other problems to pay attention to her sister's needs.

Even the attention of a schizophrenic stalker saying: "Dead girls can reach from the grave" over the telephone and then stabbing her fail to stop Blake climbing into bed with the computer man.

We left Blake worrying that the hacker has demanded £20m within five days or else he'll strike again in a baby unit.

If I was her, I'd be more worried that I was living on the top floor of an apartment block served by one of those old-fashioned lifts with gates that always break down in thrillers like this.

La Plante's drama - which concludes tonight - is ingeniously plotted with a few nightmares about blood not water coming out of taps and an impressively nasty villain in the ruthless hacker. I just wish The Commander herself would lighten up a bit.

No chance of much light relief as ER returned, with several members of the medical team shot at in a road rage incident and run off the road into the Chicago river.

Back in emergency, there was much shouting of medical terms as Gregg Pratt (no relation) took a turn for the worse. "Oh crap, he has a blown pupil," said the nurse. It sounded serious.

Not as serious as the doctors' personal problems. When one said, "I need a bit of time" to get over a tragedy, you knew this was her way of saying she wasn't renewing her contract.

Despite the abuse heaped on the first series, The Crouches is back. This is a comedy, something I picked up from the publicity, not because it made me laugh. The audience, on the other hand, were in hysterics at jokes about reaching 40, dancing like John Travolta and teenagers getting tattoos.

Much was made of The Crouches because it was the first black sit-com on the BBC. My feeling is that whether the participants were black, white or sky blue pink with yellow dots, it still wouldn't be funny.

Jonathan Lemalu and Malcolm Martineau, King's Hall, Newcastle University

NEWCASTLE International Chamber Music Orchestra dished up yet another rare treat; this time in the form of the New Zealand-born Samoan Jonathan Lemalu, whose rising star has become firmly fixed in the constellation of the greats. Appearing at Newcastle University's King's Hall with the accomplished pianist Malcolm Martineau, the baritone charmed an audience with his cavernous voice and understated presence. The evening began on a hesitant note as, only a few lines into his opening recital, Lemalu stopped dead in his tracks. But after an unflustered "take two", he started again with aplomb. If anything, it was a mark of his perfectionism and the hiccough was soon forgotten as he displayed his awesome communicative skills. Faures' Poeme d'un jour was powerfully projected, though the hall's acoustics did not do it justice. While French may not be Lemalu's strong point, he was more at ease with his German diction in Schumann's Dichterliebe. The air seemed to resonate at the power of his chords, while he modulated his volume perfectly for the silkiest of translations of the more intimate passages.

Martineau's playing was perfectly wedded to Lemalu's lovingly-shaped phrasing, and he spun out some exquisite lines in the piano postludes. The second half saw a consummate interpretation of five songs of Brahms and a rousing rendition of Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel. As an encore, the duet rewarded the audience with a recital of Gerald Finzi's Amabel. It was musical artistry at its finest.

Gavin Engelbrech