Inventions That Changed The World (BBC2): Flesh And The Devil (C4): The Alan Clark Diaries (BBC Four): AT times it seemed the opening instalment of Inventions That Changed The World had been made purely to give Jeremy Clarkson the opportunity to play with guns.

He even donned combat gear and joined soldiers on an Army exercise, only to be shot within one minute.

In between firing blanks, the Top Gear presenter gave us the history of the gun, a weapon that has devastating effects and has changed the course of history in a truly horrific way.

Clarkson's approach was much the same as when road testing a car - enthusiastic and opinionated. He admitted to the sense of power that handling a gun gives, and that power is an aphrodisiac. The gun may be an "instrument of Satan" but is "unbelievably sexy".

The rise in gun crime doesn't surprise on learning America has more gun shops than petrol stations and you can buy a Kalishnikov for £60. While others get rich using the weapon he developed, Mr Kalishnikov himself lives on a state pension. Royalties could come from the German company wanting to put his name on its product - umbrellas.

Worryingly, Clarkson did a Blue Peter and showed how to make a gun using plumber's pipe and hairspray. It fired potatoes not bullets, but still looked a pretty lethal weapon.

Antony Thomas's film Flesh And The Devil was a serious attempt to discover the links, if any, between enforced celibacy and recent scandals involving Catholic priests and child sexual abuse cases around the world.

The church, inevitably, didn't emerge in a very good light. We heard from abuse victims, as well as a priest and a nun who married.

Most telling was the confession of a paedophile priest. He entered the priesthood knowing he had this problem but thought, with God's help, it would go away. He began a relationship with an 11-year-old boy in his first parish and continued until, at 18, the boy demanded the sexual activity stop.

The priest attempted suicide, followed by therapy, chemical castration and finally, the most extreme measure, surgical castration. But, as sexual drive is in the brain, the urge isn't eliminated when the instrument is destroyed.

Figures reveal that six per cent of priests in the US get sexually involved with minors. Jonathan told of being abused by his parish priest over a nine-year period. At the age of ten, when the abuse began, he didn't know whether it was right or wrong. As the priest was viewed as "God on earth", he didn't see how it could be bad.

MP Alan Clark was known to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, even if the dramatisation of The Alan Clark Diaries was keener to chart his political rather than his marital indiscretions. There was mention of "running three women living within half-a-mile" but this first episode was more interested in whether he was drunk while presenting his first Bill to Parliament.

John Hurt is an excellent Clark, making him an arrogant, yet vulnerable, flesh and blood human being rather than a caricature randy politician.

Published: 16/01/2004