Something even odder

The master was being beastly to his wife and forcing himself upon her. She was drinking too much. Her female companion was having secret meetings with the doctor who'd got her mistress pregnant and then performed an abortion.

But something even odder was materialising in this Victorian household - a portly, bald chap with a smug countenance kept popping out from behind doors and furniture to press his opinions on the TV audience.

He looked familiar, possibly because we've seen him on Monarch Of The Glen or watched him collect a screenplay Oscar for Gosford Park. This was was Julian Fellowes, although in these circumstances not such a jolly good Fellowes.

He wandered through The Case Of Charles Bravo commenting on the action unfolding before our eyes. He even turned detective to solve the case of the money-grabbing husband poisoned in "a murder that rocked Victorian society".

Fellowes liked using the word "ghastly" to describe events, a word that could also usefully be applied to this pilot for a possible series in which the writer-actor rakes over old murder cases.

The script itself was a crime as Florence Bravo, following the death of her first husband, declared: "I feel like a bird freed from a cage" and later confessed to her new husband about her affair with the doctor: "I allowed an intimacy to occur that was unwise".

Bravo seemed willing to forgive and forget on the assumption that "a woman who has gone wrong once is unlikely to go wrong again".

Fellowes' qualifications for playing detective weren't specified but he dared to disagree with Agatha Christie's conclusion that the doctor did it. His verdict - that Bravo's plan to poison his wife resulted in his own death - hardly convinced.

At least Francesco da Mosto has a valid claim to present the BBC's four-part documentary about Venice as "the city is in my blood" as his family have lived there for more than 1,000 years.

This is a visually spectacular, and often beautiful, look at the group of islands in a tiny lagoon to which people fled in terror from the anti-social activities of Attila the Hun in Italy.

The downside was da Mosto's English accent which initially made me think I'd stumbled into a repeat of that much-ridiculed drama The Borgias. In other respects, he's an ideal guide because of his enthusiasm and knowledge.

He's not afraid to get involved with people and places he's visiting. Sampling fish in the market, he was told: "Shrimps are like women - very tasty, so flavoursome. Prawns are like men, much harder. Basically they're not as good."

Da Mosto revealed in a most dramatic way the secret of the lagoon that makes it impossible for enemy fleets to invade. He stopped his speedboat in the middle of the lagoon and jumped into the water. It didn't even cover his Wellingtons. He was walking on water. Shallows and mudflats make it treacherous for unwelcome visitors.

There was no doubting his pride in his city, this "temple to romance and passion and beauty". Surveying St Mark's Square at dawn, he said it was "just like a woman you fall in love with her every day". The tourists brochure couldn't have put it better.

Published: 18/10/2004