TV review

Who Kidnapped Shergar? (C4)

NEVER let it be said that ITV is short of original ideas. Days after the debut of a police series about ill-matched detectives with the word "murder " in the title, comes a police series about ill-matched detectives with the word "murder" in the title.

Just like Murder In Suburbia, Murder City is a disappointment. It's not as bad but still not good enough. There is room for improvement. With Amanda Donohoe and Kris Marshall as the duo, that may well happen in future episodes.

The admirable Donohoe, in particular, was given far too little to do and virtually nothing in the way of character as DI Susan Alembic - her surname being about the only interesting thing about her.

Former My Family star Marshall's DS Luke Stone was the quirkier half of the partnership as the pair investigated a murder with no body, just a room splattered with two or three litres of blood.

The teenage occupant of the room was missing. Matters were complicated when a man was shot through the neck with a crossbow bolt in his office, without the killer appearing on the CCTV cameras. An earlier remark that "maybe the killer isn't human" sparked the interest momentarily.

Stone solved things after finding "the optimum route of invisibility" in this case of murder by mathematics. Not a classic whodunit, but a vast improvement on the bickering of the silly female cops in Murder In Suburbia.

Detectives searching for the champion racehorse were stumped, as Who Kidnapped Shergar? reminded us. This documentary promised to answer the question 20 years after "the ultimate racing machine" was snatched from his retirement work as a stud. A £2m ransom was demanded but the horse was never found.

The programme kept its promise to reveal new details of the kidnapping. Shergar's groom Jim Fitzgerald told, for the first time, how masked and armed men burst into his home and forced him to take them to Shergar.

It was suggested that insisting that three racing pundits conduct the ransom negotiations was one of several false trails. The police knew more than was made public. They had evidence to link the kidnapping to the IRA.

Short of money, the organisation thought kidnapping Shergar was an easy way to raise a few million pounds. Snatching a horse, they reckoned erroneously, would be less controversial than kidnapping a person. The fact that Shergar was owned, not by one person, but by a number of shareholders made negotiations difficult too.

The conclusion was that Shergar was probably dead within hours of being stolen. Fitzgerald reckoned that the horse would have been particularly troublesome as it was the stud season. He may have injured himself and had to be shot. As his final resting place still remains a mystery, we may never know the truth.

A Taste Of Honey, York Theatre Royal

IN its day - 1958 - A Taste Of Honey must have been quite shocking, being described by J B Priestley as being "about a girl with a semi-prostitute mother who gets pregnant by a black man and is befriended by a homosexual". Yet Shelagh Delaney's play, written when she was just 18, doesn't seem designed solely to shock.

Today, such ingredients are commonplace but the piece still has the power to hold an audience when given such loving treatment as director Damian Cruden bestows on this well-staged revival.

The play is more about character than plot, a series of mostly duologues interwoven by jazzy musical links. That could make it a little slow for modern audiences but the performances win you over.

Katherine Dow Blyton judges precisely just how far she can go as Helen, the sluttish mother with a liking for men and booze, and never tips over into caricature as she puts her own interests before those of daughter Jo. She'll never be named mother of the year, but she might just win a competition to find a double for Hayley from Coronation Street.

Helen Rutter makes a natural and sympathetic Jo, a girl desperately trying to make it on her own after lack of maternal love. Glyn Williams lends strong support as fussy Geoffrey, another of society's outcasts, with Mark White suitably repellent as the latest of Helen's unsuitable lovers and Cornelius MacCarthy as the sailor who deserts the pregnant Jo.

l Runs until April 3. Box office (01904) 623568.

Steve Pratt

The Vagina Monologues, Darlington Civic Theatre

CERTAINLY the most amusing examination of the vagina most women will ever encounter, The Vagina Monologues should be made compulsory course material for every trainee gynaecologist.

This selection of startlingly honest, real life stories are the result of writer Eve Ensler's desire to get women talking about, well, their unmentionables. But as she explains "Once they started, they couldn't stop," and we should be thankful because what follows is a marvellous, if shocking, collection of tales as layer after layer of surprising, very amusing facts and experiences are revealed.

Achingly funny, the monologues uncover women's most private feelings about themselves and their (for one woman at least) "coochie schnorchers".

In between the raucous laughter of topics titled "If your vagina could speak, what would it say?" and "What would it wear?" there are some poignant tales. But the majority are hilariously delivered by Lesley Joseph, Alison Newman and Andrea Oliver.

It was the Vagina Monologues which gave birth to V-Day and the performances are still used today to raise money to stop violence against women. And yes, there is a little encouragement to join in and chant the 'c' word. Believe me, for someone who feels self-conscious clapping along at musicals, this was a horrifying prospect. But beware, peer pressure may just win out at this one!

l Runs until Saturday. Box Office: (01325) 486555

Michelle Hedger