Blue Murder (ITV1); State Of Play (BBC1); Ascent Of The Red Planet (C4)

Clutching a bottle of champagne, Janine Lewis arrives home and rushes excitedly upstairs to tell her husband that she's been promoted, only to find her loved one in bed with another woman. Tina the home help, to be precise. As Janine notes bitterly: "She helped herself all right."

With three children and another on the way, she's plunged into the chaotic world of the single working mother. The difference is that she's a high-ranking policewoman. And so Blue Murder introduces us to another detective whose detective skills can't solve the problems of their personal life.

All this makes the two-parter (which concludes tonight) sound grimmer and more downbeat that it actually is. Perhaps the presence of Caroline Quentin as DCI Lewis that makes you expect funny lines, as though she's still in Jonathan Creek or Men Behaving Badly.

The story is horribly predictable. Her tetchy boss is more concerned with overtime payments than solving cases, while her new DI (Ian Kelsey) turns out to be an old flame, although their passion never quite ignited. "I got as far as the bedroom and changed my mind," she reveals.

In between dealing with veggie daughter, mugged son and helpful neighbour, she has to find out who killed the deputy headmaster found face down on his allotment. By the end of the first episode, it's clear that the investigation is taking a back seat to Lewis's personal problems.

Much, much better was State Of Play, which those pesky schedulers pitted directly against Blue Murder. Give praise for a series that comes in one-hour episodes over the next month or so rather than indigestible 90 or 120-minute chunks. Paul Abbott, of Clocking Off and Cracker fame, knows how to spin a yarn, even if some characters - notably, an unfaithful MP and a maverick investigative journalist - in this conspiracy thriller are a bit too familiar. That's a minor quibble in a very polished, assured and gripping production.

David Morrissey is potential Cabinet member Stephen Collins, whose research assistant Sonia falls to her death under a train on the London Underground on the same day that a suspected drug dealer is shot. By the end of episode one we know she wasn't pushed and received a phone call from the dealer hours before her death.

John Simm's reporter Cal McCaffrey (who just so happened to be Collins' campaign manager in a past life) is a man who does everything he's told not to do. "I've just spent £500 without authorisation," he says to his editor. "And you still think you work here," replies the boss.

I've always worried about actor Brian Blessed's mountain climbing exploits. That booming voice of his could start an avalanche. Fortunately Ascent Of The Red Planet sent him into outer space. Well, not quite. He led a team to discover the skills and equipment needed to climb the highest mountain in the solar system. Olympus Mons is two-and-a-half times higher than Everest and 48 million miles away on Mars.

Instead of spending six months getting to the planet, they flew to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean where landscapes, caves, lava fields and craters resemble those on Mars. They used a helium balloon to simulate one-third gravity, lived in a pressurised tent for ten days and went climbing. But the biggest challenge was more down-to-earth - how to operate the microwave. There was also the problem of Blessed, who is a big man, fitting into his hammock. When he fell out, the crash nearly brought their tent down on top of them.