Amnesia (ITV1): FORGETTING where you put your glasses or forgetting an appointment are unfortunate lapses of memory. Forgetting what you did with your wife is another thing altogether.

All Detective Sergeant Mackenzie has to remember his wife Lucia are sweat-inducing nightmares, involving pursuing her through the woods. She's gone missing and no one knows what's become of her which, to be honest, is a little embarrassing if you're a policeman.

"I need to see her. I screwed up with work and drinking. I need to say goodbye and sorry," says Mac, using missing persons websites in his efforts to find the missus.

John Hannah does anguish and heavy drinking very well, so Amnesia was off to a flying start with him looking particularly tortured as Mac. Chris Lang's thriller managed to maintain its momentum over the two episodes as Mac became obsessed with proving that boatyard owner John Dean was a serial amnesiac who killed his wives for the life insurance and, a few months later, resurfaced with a different identity.

Thinking about it afterwards, it was possible to pick holes in the plot, but the thing is that it worked at the time. Given that the cast - and therefore the suspects - was so small, Lang's script worked wonders in keeping the mystery going.

If Mac had followed his police colleague's advice to "let her go", he'd never have stumbled across the missing persons report about John Dean, a man with no recollection of his past (allegedly).

Wife Jenna (Jemma Redgrave) didn't mind but Mac was worried for her safety, as well as that of his own wife, whom he thought he might have murdered and erased the killing from his memory.

Dean wasn't impressed when Mac, in various states of agitation, kept turning up on his doorstep with accusations of murder and fraud. Rather than scream police harassment, he had a conversation about biscuits.

Dean said he was "a bloke who likes to dunk Rich Tea in his coffee" (presumably because dunking Rich Tea in tea sounds repetitive), adding: "If I discovered for the first 30 years I preferred custard creams, what do you think it would do to me?".

The plot thickened like curdled milk as Mac received anonymous notes accusing him of murder, Dean agreed to take part in an experiment to recover his memory, his wife became pregnant - and the director used ever more fancy camera angles in Mac's nightmares.

The Constant Wife, Darlington Civic Theatre

SET among fashionable society in London's 1920s, Somerset Maugham's witty play opens with Mrs Culver (Virginia Stride) and her daughter Martha (Susan Penhaligon) discussing older daughter Constance's marriage.

Martha is all for telling Constance of her husband John's infidelity, while her mother feels that the affair will pass as long as Constance doesn't find out.

When Constance makes her entrance we find, not the pathetic wronged wife we are expecting, but a scintillating, intelligent woman of the world. Can she really be unaware of what's going on?

As the plot unfolds, the relationships involved prove more complicated than first thought, and Constance takes her joyful revenge on John, who gets his just desserts and more.

The cast is a joy: Susan Penhaligon plays the frumpy Martha with great comic talent and Liza Goddard as Constance positively sparkles. Virginia Stride is elegant and commanding as Constance's mother, with very firm views on a woman's status and behaviour. Robert East manages to remain likeable as the pompous adulterer John, who is so stunned by his wife's management of the situation that you can't help feeling sorry for him.

Maugham's script is very entertaining and causes some sharp intakes of breath with his observations on marriage. It's a polished, professional and very enjoyable evening.

Until Saturday. Booking Office (01325) 486555

Sue Heath

Published: ??/??/2003