Waking The Dead (BBC1); Young Doctors (ITV1): THE team investigating unsolved crimes in Waking The Dead need to turn their attention to star Trevor Eve's glasses.

First they're on. Then they're off. Then on again. Then off again - you get the picture. The mystery is why they aren't mentioned in the credits and don't have a dressing room of their own, such is their importance.

Eve making a spectacle of himself is one way of building a character that doesn't exist on the page because the writers are too busy concocting convoluted plots to keep us guessing until the end of each two-hour episode.

The first of six new cases was particularly nasty as the murderer chose to hammer a nine-inch nail through the skull of his victims. Cue what the Radio Times described as "graphic images of the aftermath of violence" - i.e. lots of shots of bloody corpses with heads nailed to the floor.

It all had to do with something that happened to a group of soldiers during the Second World War, hinted at by the first victim - the one that caused them to re-open the case - being a conscientious objector "executed" by the killer back in 1948.

There was plenty of blood too in Young Doctors, which follows three medical students in their third year of training at Southampton General Hospital.

"It was a bit of a bloodbath," Jacob Lee admitted, mopping up the mess after taking a patient's blood - and spilling a lot - in a scene straight out of Dracula's living room rather than a NHS hospital.

After two years training, Jacob had only practised taking blood on dummies. Mr Molesdale didn't realise what he was letting himself in for when he agreed to be Jacob's first victim.

He needed to take blood from an artery not a vein. "A bit easier," declared Jacob, only to find he couldn't find an artery. "Do you mind if I have another go or shall I get a doctor?," he asked the patient patient.

He struck gold - well, blood - on the second go. The snag was being asked to get another sample from the same man later on. Blood started pouring out. "I'll get that cleaned up. At least it means we're in the right spot," said Jacob the apprentice vampire.

Camilla Anderson found helping surgeon Professor Ambrose was a hands-on experience. Hands in, to be strictly accurate, as he operated on a man having part of his liver removed.

"Do you want to stick your hand in?," he asked Camilla. "Stick it right in. Can you feel a lump?". If you thought seeing nails hammered in heads was gory, you should have seen Camilla rummaging about inside a man's stomach as if she was looking for hidden treasure.

Some students displayed a better bedside manner than others. Vicar's son Barney caused hearts to flutter as he did a ward round. Hopefully, he didn't cause any to stop completely.

"I thought, 'Ooh, there's a dishy one'," said one elderly female patient. She'll be less happy when she sees Jacob coming to get blood.

Published: ??/??/2004