Dinner Doctors (five); Angel (five)

"QUITE wriggly, aren't they?," observed presenter Anneka Rice as she watched the objects of the experiment on Dinner Doctors, one of those endless lifestyle shows littering the daytime schedules. This one combines healthy cooking and managing unruly children - and with only 30 minutes at their disposal, there's a lot to be crammed in.

The first programme visited the Shearman family where the aforementioned wriggly objects were youngsters Joe and James. Although they both liked making a lot of noise at mealtimes, they didn't agree on their favourite foods. Joe liked spinach and pasta, James liked curry. Their mother Jane would like them to sit still and eat.

She works full time, gets home at six-ish, and has a mad rush to cook dinner and get them to bed. Enter Peter Vaughan, who specialises in food for health and well-being, and relationship expert Jenni Trent Hughes. The former searched the cupboards, fridge and freezer to see what the family was eating. Everywhere he looked, he found frozen spinach.

Jane wanted to get her sons to eat more healthily, so Vaughan showed her how to be "sneaky with a vegetable", while Hughes offered advice on calming them down at mealtimes. The main problem with the programme was that the family didn't really have a very big problem to solve. "Basically, they're eating fairly healthily, it's just that they're a bit wild," Hughes concluded.

Vaughan's menus included chilli con carne, which James and Joe helped prepare. They were even allowed to remove the seeds from the chillis while being told not to touch their fingers afterwards. Of course, James did and found his mouth burning. "It's hot, isn't it? You'll listen next time, won't you?," said the chef, a touch gleefully, I thought.

Listening was problem in Angel, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer spin-off that has an identity of its own, unlike most spin-offs. I thought I misheard when someone talked about a demon called a Cantonese Fook Beast but as the credit named one co-producer as Skip Schoolnik, I decided anything was possible.

Cordelia, a helper of Angel the sometime vampire, was having visions that felt like her "head was torn open and hot lava poured in".

Her body came up in nasty boils. "What is there to say except gross, yuk and unclean," she noted accurately. Help came from a green, horned demon. He knew he had a tough job. "It's way outside my area of expertise but who knew William Shatner could sing? Okay, bad example," he said. This is a very musical demon as he confessed to being a great fan of the movie The Sound Of Music.

Despite grisly make-up and brutal fights, Angel has a welcome vein of humour running through it, like the demonic prison warder, who keeps inmates in burning cells. Why, Angel asked, couldn't he hear the prisoner screaming with pain? Simple, replied the warder, he'd cut off the sound. "There are only so many, 'oh my God, the pain, please make it stop' you can listen to before it bugs the crap out of you," he added.