Henry VIII (ITV1)

Silent Witness (BBC1)

"The time has come to cast your votes," said the man in charge and, for one brief moment, I thought we were back watching Pop Idol.

But no, this was yet another drama about Henry VIII and, after the votes had been cast, Anne Boleyn was crowned the most unpopular queen in the land. Found guilty of treason, her prize was to be burnt or beheaded at the king's pleasure.

Having already seen one beheading, we knew not to sit in the front row at the execution. Earlier, the crowd watching the Duke of Buckingham lose his head had been drenched by spurting blood as the axe fell. This meant an early bath for Charles Dance's duke. He was one of many familiar faces who came and went with monotonous regularity in this latest - and, as far as I'm concerned, unnecessary - recounting of the much-married monarch's marital mishaps.

Joss Ackland's Henry VII expired before the opening credits had finished. David Suchet's toady Cardinal Wolsey, along with two queens, didn't last beyond the first of the two-part series. All the while, Ray Winstone's Henry scowled and shouted because he couldn't have a legitimate son and heir. It was all the fault of his father who, on his deathbed, told his son, the incoming king, "Secure the family line, have a son. Aaaaahh . . .".

By the next scene, it was 15 years later and Henry was still trying for a boy. "Come here and be a woman to your man," was his idea of foreplay. And he wasn't beyond marital rape when Anne Boleyn dared to criticise him cavorting with other women.

"I am a king, I can have what I want," screamed Henry, although clearly the one thing he couldn't have was a son. We left him pursuing Jane Seymour, one of the queen's ladies soon to become one of the king's ladies. She has obedience, humility, integrity - everything, he said, that his wife Anne Boleyn did not. She also, it's worth pointing out, had a head.

This Henry VIII was all very jolly with lots of men with beards on horseback riding through the forest, others whispering treasonable plans behind big pillars and women in large costumes going ga-ga for the king. Helena Bonham Carter's Anne Boleyn was more of a minx than usual, refusing Henry no sex before marriage, but promising, "It will be worth the wait". If only she'd lost her head over him before the wedding, she might not have lost it afterwards.

Severed heads were the least of forensic pathologist Professor Sam Ryan's problems as Silent Witness returned with a grisly, but gripping, case as she investigated the aftermath of an explosion at a hotel where a government minister was staying.

Amanda Burton's Ryan wears the unsmiling, slightly offended look of a woman who's caught a whiff of a bad smell. Here she had even less reason to smile after being subjected to a sexual attack, and having her work disrupted by a Cabinet fixer and anti-terrorist officer.

"That one's almost intact. The rest are body parts," she said, sifting through charred remains and putting something in a plastic bag with the comment, "part of the lower jaw". With five corpses to examine, she had a ball, as did the special effects team who created these unsightly mortuary slab extras.

Now, please, allow Sam to let her hair down. Just as long as she doesn't lose her head completely.

Published: ??/??/2003