Second Generation (C4): Waking The Dead (BBC1): THE families were Indian in Neil Biswas's two-parter Second Generation but the emotional fall-out could have happened to anyone.

Where there are parents and children, there is conflict. This cross-culture, generation gap drama incorporates a bit of King Lear (a father at war with his three daughters) and Romeo And Juliet (lovers from rival families coming together).

As Sharma lies comatose in a hospital bed, his relatives gather round to say their goodbyes before the life support is switched off. Eldest daughter Pria wants his business, so she can sell it at a big profit. The youngest, Heere, has been estranged from her father for nine years. Middle daughter Rina has the peacemaker role, attempting UN-like to bring the two sides together.

Sharma goes and spoils it all by waking up. The only side effects are attacks of flashbacks - that common drama device - involving a burning funeral pyre and his dead wife.

Heere, the youngest daughter, has her own problems. Her music journalist boyfriend is writing a feature about a record company run by an old boyfriend Sam. Before long, the two ex-lovers are making sweet music together again.

Meanwhile, Pria is convincing dad to get rid of one of his trusted old employees. Not so much sacking him, he's told, as bringing forward his retirement. When the flashbacks get too much for Sharma, he's packed off to a mental hospital so Pria can finally sell the business.

This all sounds terribly soapy, and I suppose it was. But the cast, led by Om Puri and Bend It Like Beckham's Parminder Nagra, and Jon Sen's direction kept the drama moving along like an express train over the two excellent 90-minute episodes.

Waking The Dead, back for a third series, didn't hang around either. This was all very well while you were watching, but afterwards the plot didn't bear close examination. Far too many questions were left unanswered. It needed an Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple to gather everyone in the library to explain exactly who had done what to whom.

The episode, aptly-named Multistorey, was a tall story in which Trevor Eve's flustered Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd let personal feelings get in the way of re-examining the Hungerford-style massacre of people in a typical English high street seven years previously.

The case resurfaced when the man jailed for the crime, who'd always pleaded his innocence, appealed against his sentence. That coincided with two children finding a gun, which showed that Boyd's policeman friend was killed with his own weapon.

Affairs, beatings up, blackmail, a mystery man and an awful lot of lies made the investigation hard going, although Boyd's team went about their individual tasks efficiently enough. Sue Johnson had the Cracker role as the psychologist, Holly Aird did forensics, Wil Johnson talked on the phone a lot, and Claire Goose looked suspiciously at her boss after sneaking a glimpse of him pocketing a vital tape recording.

None of it made much sense when you thought about it, but fans of Waking The Dead won't hold that against it.

Published: 16/09/2003