Accidents Can Happen (BBC1): PAULA Newbold was devastated when she returned from work to find her home on fire.

Gizmo, her pet rat, had been rescued by firemen but what had become of her beloved dog, Lucky?. You can just imagine the cruel jokes if Lucky hadn't have been - lucky, that is - and perished in the fire.

Happily, the dog had sniffed trouble and fled the smoke-filled, burning house.

The animal showed much more sense than Paula's husband Barry, whose careless smoking habits caused the blaze. He thought he'd stubbed out his fag in an ashtray but appeared to have stuffed it down the side of the sofa.

"Please tell me Lucky is all right," pleaded Paula as she arrived on the scene. She was ecstatic to see her pet again. "I gave her a big cuddle and a stroke, and she gave me a big kiss and a cuddle," she recalled.

Barry was in the doghouse for starting the fire. "All I could do was shout, 'What have you done?'," admitted Paula.

As for the man who proved that smoking is dangerous for your health and home, all Barry could say was: "We were totally gutted". Their home was in much the same state.

Never fear, because Accidents Can Happen - and so can awful programmes like this - delights in showing people rebuilding lives and homes torn apart by fire and flood.

This is a daytime programme and the makers seem to think viewers at this time are unable to remember facts for very long. Every 15 minutes, presenter Nadia Sawalha gives us a rundown on what had happened so far. Even more annoyingly, the hour-long show flits back and forth between two case histories, with Nadia forever promising: "We'll find out later..."

The unlikely heroes and heroines are the loss adjusters and disaster recovery experts, who provide the money to rebuild scorched and flooded homes. Not that Kirsty and Phil here were in the same league as their Location, Location, Location namesakes.

Nadia skipped lightly over the fact that Adrian and Jennifer hadn't insured their home in a South Wales village flooded by a burst dam. Happily, they won the contract to restore the home of a relative living in the same terrace. Leonard had lost everything in the flood, even his false teeth, as he was in bed asleep when alerted to the millions of gallons of water heading his way.

Back in Barnsley, work on Paula and Barry's house was progressing, although ever-cheery Nadia announced: "It looks like it will be quite a while before they can return."

There was bad news about Paula's fireplace, which she seemed to love almost as much as Lucky and slightly more than Barry. It couldn't be saved. "I'm gutted," said Paula yet again.

She looked on the bright side. It meant that she could give the living room a new look - and extract a promise from Barry that he wouldn't smoke in the house again.

Published: ??/??/2004