History productions used to be a matter of big sets and even bigger costumes with actors declaiming like they were in Shakespeare.

The endless procession of historical documentaries, with reconstructions and computer graphics, has changed all that.

Period drama has to be different. So, like the recent Henry VIII, the BBC's new four-parter, Charles II, feels the need to employ plenty of sex, violence and hand-held cameras - and to hell with the facts and think of the ratings if the merry monarch behaves like, well, one of today's royals.

It's difficult to watch shows about past kings and queens without imaging how the tabloids would treat them. What the butler would have seen in Charles II's day was a succession of women in the royal bedroom.

The peasants, as is their wont, may have been revolting but King Charles - after a dream in which he was splattered with the blood of his poor old dad's severed head - was declaring: "I'm a king, I'll be ruled by no one". He was too busy fornicating and performing, or having performed upon him, other sexual acts to worry about politics or religion.

"You used to say I was the best," said one of his conquests.

"I was only 13, I didn't have much to compare with," came the reply.

None of us, royal or not, have seen big hair like Queen Catharine's. It was as large as a small continent.

Rufus Sewell is having a ball as King Charles II, like some royal hotel inspector trying out bed and bawd. All this and Diana Rigg, without make-up, as mother, berating him with the comment: "You've always been weak."

That's not an accusation that could be hurled at wartime detective Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle, back with more investigations in Foyle's War. This was one of last year's most unlikely hits. It may boast nostalgic appeal but is steelier than the usual Sunday night feelgood fodder.

Michael Kitchen's policeman is painstaking but fair, although he was thrown off course by the reappearance of a woman to whom he once proposed.

Faced with an old flame who said of her husband, "I never loved him, not even for a day, not the way I loved you", he could only look embarrassed and shame-faced. Emotional displays do not come easily to Foyle. So it was a surprise when he delivered a right hook to a prisoner and declared: "I quite enjoyed that".

That certainly wasn't my opinion of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest (ITV1) which was as entertaining as having your fingernails pulled out. I lasted only a few songs as there was something creepy and unsettling about watching pint-sized performers behaving as though they were on Pop Idol. I longed for Simon Cowell to come on and reduce them to tears with his acerbic, but usually accurate, comments.

Published: 17/11/2003