Hunting Chris Ryan (BBC1)

IF I were lost in the jungle, Chris Ryan is the man I'd like to have with me. The former SAS hero showed in the first of three real-life action adventures that he's more than capable of outwitting his enemies to get out of a tight spot.

The idea of the series is to send him on missions in some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Here, the location was the dense jungle of Honduras, where he had to retrieve vital equipment buried in a secret supply dump.

A four-strong hunter force was let loose to track him down and capture him. They might have succeeded if only the pursuers hadn't resembled Dad's Army rejects rather than the ex-special forces soldiers they were.

Ryan was on his own, filming himself with a mini-camera and only occasionally meeting up with the camera crew. There was no doubt he was doing it for real. One look at the horrible condition of his feet - he had trench foot - confirmed that.

A pursuer too was taken ill suffering from dehydration. Specialist combat medic Sergeant Ged Healy warned that heat stroke and heat exhaustion ("which can be fatal") were dangers. For some, being required to drink eight to 12 litres of water a day must have been the biggest challenge.

As Ryan fought intense heat, thick undergrowth and bad feet to reach his goal, he consistently outwitted his pursuers at every turn.

He went one way, they went the other. He confused them (not difficult, it appeared) with false trails. After finding the equipment, he booby-trapped the site - and the hunters set off the smoke grenade. In real life, they'd have been dead or injured.

Ex-parachute regiment captain Chris Plyming, who was setting the scenario, had the pursuers picked up and dropped near a rapidly-disappearing Ryan. They managed to muck that up too, abseiling from the chopper into a marshy area and finding themselves up to their necks in water. They had to be rescued and put down in a drier location.

Ryan continued to fool them as he made for a pick-up point on the beach. They missed spotting him by a matter of metres, and then patrolled the wrong part of the beach, enabling him to make a successful dash across open ground to the speed boat picking him up.

This was all good fun for the viewers, if not the participants battling heat, humidity and a poor sense of direction. It certainly made those sort-of-famous performers who braved the Australian jungle for I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here look like they were on a luxury holiday.

Saturday Night Fever, Darlington Civic Theatre

JOHN Travolta is a hard act to follow by anyone's standards so it's no surprise that this stage version of Saturday Night Fever fails to sparkle like the original film.

A West End hit, it has a wonderfully energetic cast and some amazing dancing, but just seems to lack a little bit of magic.

Stephane Anelli and Zoe Smith as the lead characters are perfectly competent at dancing and singing but they don't bowl me over and I don't really believe in them. The plot is also paper thin, with various characters and storylines seeming to peter out as the show goes on.

None of that matters too much, thankfully, as the music and dancing in Saturday Night Fever are the main things.

The songs, of course, are fantastic. Classic disco track after track, all favourites of mine, and belted out with much gusto here. The cast features some seriously talented - and utterly gorgeous - dancers, both male and female, and all dressed in fab 70s costumes.

Four in particular perform breathtaking displays of agility and rhythm at the dance contest at the 2001 Odyssey nightclub. Earlier, an utterly funky take on Jive Talkin' gets a huge round of applause.

The only scenes which didn't work for me were at the Dale Dance Studio, where the embarrassing tutor Monty performed daft moves in front of an incompetent class - an attempt to be funny which simply didn't work.

But the show ends on a high with the audience invited to get down in the aisles to a medley of the best tunes. They do, en masse, clearly having had a marvellous night.

Sam Strangeways

l The sold-out show runs until Saturday.

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