The Unlikeliest Couples In Britain (ITV1); St Jimmy's (ITV1): WHAT could be worse than being married to a man who thinks he's Tommy Cooper and goes around with a fez on his head saying "Just like that" and telling awful jokes?

Not a lot, you might think, until you hear about Joy and Christopher, or Christine as she now is.

Four years ago Chris told his wife of more than 30 years that she'd married a woman. He'd been dressing secretly as a woman and started hormone treatment to complete the transition. Joy hadn't - and she knew how silly it sounded - noticed anything different. "If you're not looking for it, you don't notice," she said.

Her reaction to the news was, like several shock moments in this odd couple documentary, unexpected. She wasn't mad, just sad, upset and disappointed. Their son supported Chris's decision; his daughter treated him as if he'd died and didn't speak to him for over a year.

The twist is that Joy and Chris are still together. She decided to "just get on with it". They still sleep in the same bed, but don't have physical relations. "When I saw her as a woman, although it wasn't what I wanted, I couldn't help feeling it was the right thing," explained Joy.

This seemed remarkably reasonable of her, a testament to a human being's ability to adapt to the strangest of situations. A mother-of-two who started sleeping with a schoolboy half her age, and a racing driver's widow who speaks to her dead husband through a medium were other out-of-the-ordinary romances featured.

Steve is ex-army and Jill's a hairdresser with a blue rinse clientele. But in private, they are swingers - or sharers, as outwardly prim and proper Jill prefers.

She saw no harm in sharing. It was, she said and you had to agree with her, less dangerous than smoking.

"We share pleasure with other people," she explained, kitted out in leather for an evening in with similarly-minded friends. It was "a busy night", she reported afterwards. They met a couple they'd partied with before and wanted to renew their acquaintance.

Genteel Jill spoke of "ladies kissing ladies" and four in a bed. In fact, the bedroom got rather crowded. "These two other couples came in. We were a bit absorbed so I was unable to see what was going on with the others," she said.

As she approaches 60, Jill fancies training to be a dominatrix. "It's the look not the pain," she said.

She saw nothing wrong in what they did. It wasn't as if they were "forcing it down people's throats", although she had to agree with the interviewer this was an unfortunate turn of phrase in the circumstances.

St Jimmy's is a spin-off from the 1980s fly-on-the-wall documentary series about life and death at St James' University Hospital in Leeds. The new series claims to look at the work of the team of chaplains offering support to patients at one of the biggest hospitals in Europe.

The first episode suggested that the chaplains aren't exciting enough to sustain the series. A chaplain appealing for toys of a local radio show and a minor pop star visiting a children's ward hardly make gripping TV. I suspect the focus will shift increasing to the patients in order to retain viewers' interest over the next 13 weeks.

Published: ??/??/2004