Dirty Filthy Love (ITV1); Dirty War (BBC1); The O.C. (C4): THOSE writers always bemoaning the disappearance of the single play on TV should be welcoming with open arms the series of one-off films showing on ITV1 on Sunday evenings.

They're providing a welcome change to the usual formulaic cops and doctors series.

Dirty Filthy Love was the sort of thing you'd expect to find on BBC2 or C4. Aware of this, ITV1 adorned it with a tabloid-style title and advertised with trailers carefully omitting to note that the hero was suffering from not one, but two debilitating conditions. All this will have helped attract viewers to an "offbeat romantic comedy", as the Radio Times described it with masterful understatement, that was really rather good.

Michael Sheen - last seen on TV as Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Deal - was here playing gifted architecture Mark, whose life had gone downhill because of erratic behaviour resulting from obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette's Syndrome (which causes involuntary spasms and the blurting out of obscenities).

He loses his wife and his job. To outsiders he's barking mad - literally, as he begins yapping like a dog in extreme moments of stress. Enter Charlotte, who can't cope with odd numbers. For her, three is very definitely a crowd.

She introduces Mark to a self-help group and a "Wet Wipe free zone" trip to a farm where their challenge is to hold a ball of mud in their hands, a form of torture for anyone with a cleanliness obsession.

Charlotte fancies him, which is unfortunate because he can't let go of his wife and locks himself away, ending up with long hair and nails that make him look like he's auditioning to play Howard Hughes in his reclusive years.

Dirty Filthy Love was both funny and compassionate, and quite unlike anything you've seen recently on ITV. It also contained the immortal line, said during a fight, "Mark, put the cabbage down".

If you didn't want to make Dirty Filthy Love, you could make Dirty War on the other side. The BBC's contribution to this dirty weekend was a drama-documentary about a radioactive bomb detonated in central London.

Events were based on "extensive factual research" as terrorists plotted, intelligence agencies investigated and emergency services drilled. If indeed this was rooted in truth, the outlook is not good. London may be better prepared than it's ever been for a major terrorist incident, but it's still not good enough.

Attempts to be fair to all sides made this resemble a public service announcement at times. Ministers struggled to find the "balance between truth and reassurance" in deciding how much to tell the public. Emergency services pointed out they were ill-equipped to deal with the radioactive incident that Dirty War featured. The intelligence services were hampered by the basic problem of agents who didn't speak the right languages.

The Postman Always Rings Twice.

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

ANY stage version of James M Cain's thriller about love, lust and murder has previous film versions to live up to.

Director Lucy Bailey gives this sleek and slick production a suitably filmic look, but something is wrong when you come out talking about the set rather than what happened on it.

Designer Bunny Christie has created an authentic American roadside diner, complete with swinging neon signs and banging shutters. There's a brilliant coup de theatre at the end of the first half as a car comes crashing down into the diner.

Jon Buswell's light-and-shadows lighting continues to brilliantly evoke the right atmosphere as the narrative turns into a police and courtroom drama after the interval.

If only the story had gripped as brilliantly as the design sets the scene as drifter Frank Chambers decides he not only wants the mechanic's job but also owner Nick's wife, Cora. Lust leads to sex and murder, although the pair aren't the most proficient of killers.

In the most recent film, the pair (played by Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange) mated memorably on the kitchen table. The play turns this initial coupling into a roughhouse of fighting and fumbling as they give in to their carnal desires.

But Patrick O'Kane and Charlotte Emmerson never provide enough heat to indicate the instant sexual attraction between macho drifter and frustrated diner waitress. Without that, there's a big hole at the centre of the production.

Until October 16. Box office 0113 213 7700

Steve Pratt

Published: ??/??/2004