It's so grim up North, it's funny.

THERE was a point near the end of The Stretford Wives when I couldn't resist chuckling. This was very rude of me, considering the scene I was witnessing on screen - a man lay dying on the floor, a large kitchen knife protruding from his bleeding body, as three sisters sat drinking.

After two hours of life-is-grim-up-North drama, Daniel Brocklehurst's script had become so ludicrous, as one cruel act followed another, that the only thing to do was laugh.

Rarely has a TV drama been so determinedly grim since the days of those gritty Wednesday Play slices of life. You'd find more laughs at an undertakers' convention.

It was about three sisters, but it wasn't Chekhov. "What is it about women round here? Wouldn't know a decent man if he stood in front of them," someone says. Certainly, if the sisters' choice of men was anything to go on, that was an accurate observation.

Donna is played by Fay Ripley, keen to subvert her Cold Feet image. Hence the lank hair, fag hanging off the lip and down-trodden air. She tinkers with the gas meter, gets herself banned from the local supermarket and has no money until her Giro came in the post. How she attracts a policemen into her bed while her abusive husband was in prison, I'll never know.

Sister Elaine (Claire Rushbrook, from Linda Green) is no happier. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she takes up with the married boss at the factory where she works.

Third sister Lynda (Lindsay Coulson from EastEnders) is posher, but her marriage no happier. She pretends to have a brain tumour in order to keep hold of the grand daughter her own daughter has abandoned.

All this sounds like a spoof of a grim Northern drama, and that's how it plays despite the best efforts of the trio of leading ladies.

I bet they never watch TV cookery shows, certainly not prim and proper Delia Smith whose career was reviewed in The Way We Cook. The Stretford Wives are more likely to boil the cat than an egg.

Delia, we were reminded, was the most famous cook Britain has ever known. She sells more books almost than God sells copies of The Bible.

But her shows aren't as much fun as those presented by Keith Floyd, the other "TV chef who made a difference" profiled in the programme this week. He made cooking fun - and dangerous too judging by the scene of him preparing a meal in the middle of a field in South Africa surrounded by inquisitive ostriches.

His passion and enthusiasm for cooking inspired many to follow his example. What a pity he hasn't had the same success running restaurants. His business acumen, it was suggested, was "a recipe for disaster". And no jokes about cooking the books, please.