William And Mary (ITV1); The O.C. (C4): No matter how good the script and production values, any series loses out if the leading actors don't have chemistry.

No one can predict when it's going to happen, but when it does, as in William and Mary, the results are really rather good.

Mick Ford's comedy-drama, which is back for a second series, sounds formulaic as it charts the life and death romance of a midwife and an undertaker, both of whom come with ready-made families.

But cast Martin Clunes and Julie Graham as the couple, watch the sparks fly and the whole thing works. Unlike ITV's current big hit Life Begins, this doesn't depend so much on funny lines for effect as situations that are by turns funny, sad, comic and serious.

The couple are engaged, but fixing a date for the wedding proves an impossibility considering their busy schedules. He's sold his undertaker's business and is trying to start up again, while she's working full-out in an understaffed maternity unit.

Then there's a houseful of teenagers with various problems, including two searching for somewhere to consummate their relationship, and a Down's Syndrome lad down the road, whose mother has died.

Add a dotty mother wanting to marry her toyboy and the reappearance of the father of Mary's children. This opening episode threw in a birth and a funeral for good measure - but no wedding. The pair's diaries are so full that finding a spare date to get married looks like an impossibility.

Clunes and Graham, striking up a natural rapport as the bath-loving couple, manipulate their way round this obstacle course of family problems with good sense and equally good humour.

William And Mary along with Life Begins gives ITV a healthy drama double at the moment. C4 will be hoping that teen drama The O.C. - it stands for Orange County - will be the new Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek, although some might contest the idea that we actually need a new one of either.

Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie) is a 16-year-old picked up for stealing a car and told by his public defence lawyer to "get over the fact that life dealt you a bad deck".

This is all very well for him to say, as he lives with a wife who has plenty of money, in the wealthy community of Newport Beach. Ryan, who's so deprived he can't even tie his own tie, is invited to stay after his mother kicks him out and her boyfriend thumps him.

The scene is set for a fish out of water scenario as the boy from the wrong side of the tracks is ridiculed by the rich, spoilt brats but finds solace with the attractive girl next door.

They've already met in a manner of speaking. She was left dead drunk outside her front door by her girlfriends. Caring, sharing Ryan carried her unconscious body to the pool house where he's staying and put her to bed.

Being a nice boy, he didn't climb in with her and take advantage of her. That would have ruined the series. He's going to spend the next goodness-knows-how-many episodes in misery before the pair finally get together.

It could take as long as it's going to take William and Mary to fix a wedding date.

Published: 08/03/2004