Love Again (BBC2): Roger Roger (BBC1): Creatures Of The Black Lagoon (ITV1): "It's like a French farce," said poet Philip Larkin as the three women in his life crowded round his deathbed. Funnily enough, that was the phrase I'd jotted down earlier while watching the drama concentrating on Larkin's romantic life.

There was something inherently comic about the way he clung to bachelorhood while juggling relationships with three very different women. Here was a balding, bespectacled man with a penchant for dirty magazines who maintained long-term affairs with an academic, a Catholic and his secretary. It wasn't that he possessed great charm or animal magnetism. As he himself put it, "Let's face it, I'm no Ted Hughes in the charisma department". His pillow talk wasn't exactly romantic. "I sometimes think one should be able to order sex and pay for it monthly like laundry," he proclaimed.

Monica Jones was already smitten when he took up his post as librarian at Hull University, a city he described as "flat and stinks of fish". Betty Mackereth's first impression was of a man who carried a copy of Vogue in his briefcase. She thought he might be "a bit homo-sexy", although eventually she slipped into bed with him. And then there was Maeve Brennan, who overcame her Catholic guilt to sleep with him. He resisted all attempts to go down the aisle and trifled with the affections of all three, in a one goes out one door as another comes in another door sort of way. Amazingly, they all remained with him until his death in 1985.

Hugh Bonneville, head shaved to recreate Larkin's baldness and large glasses bestride his face, didn't attempt to elicit sympathy for the poet, although the scenes with his acid-tongued mother (a marvellous Eileen Atkins) made you understand the root of his attitude to women.

Sam's trouble in Roger Roger was nightmares, not about women, but his dead partner Dexter. His doctor asked how he was physically. "Apart from palpitations, night sweats and uncontrollable tremors, I'm in pretty good shape," replied Sam.

He went away promising to be "Captain Calm", but had reckoned without a woman - what else? - who conspired to swindle him out of his fleet of cars. As he runs a mini-cab business, they're vital tools of his trade.

It's three years since John Sullivan's series has been seen, so it'll take time to bed in again. The mix of smart lines and quirky characters is already in place. I liked the mini-cab controller who snapped at a customer wondering where their cab was: "I told you an hour ago it would be five minutes."

The problem in the Survival Special, Creatures Of The Black Lagoon, was climatic. Many endangered species are at risk because of changing weather patterns in the Corcovado rainforest in Costa Rica.

The sight of a jaguar patrolling the beach - not the sort of thing Judith Chalmers ever comes across - was surprising. Equally unusual, because they're so rare, were the white lipped peccaries. They look like pigs but are only cousins (and probably not kissing ones). They'll eat anything, and spend their days moving, feeding, taking mud baths and resting. Sounds like some people I know.

Published: 28/07/2003