Rum, Sodomy And The Lash (C4)

The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs (BBC1)

Loch Ness Monster: The Ultimate Experiment (five)

Ian Fleming - Bondmaker (BBC1)

IT was a "time of debauchery, bawdiness, drunkeness and floggings". Sounds just like another day at the office to me, but we were below decks in Nelson's navy, to which Winston Churchill applied the phrase "rum, sodomy and the lash". The C4 programme of the same name offered plenty of all three in an eye-opening dramatised documentary.

The BBC was criticised for poor coverage of the review of the fleet earlier this year to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and C4 is making up for that with its Trafalgar Below Decks season, although Horatio Nelson barely got a look in amid the naval-gazing.

Those on board really were a motley crew. Half had been press-ganged into service, a third were Irish, some were boys as young as eight, and a surprising number of the men weren't men but transvestite lesbians.

Confine them for long periods in this "wooden world" and seamen behaving badly was inevitable, especially as drink rations of rum, beer or wine were distributed from midday. Aboard a ship four-and-a-half times the length of a London bus, there would be 700 or 800 men, prostitutes and pets. No wonder funny business below decks and frigging in the rigging ensued. We know all about life on board thanks to a memoir written by the marvellousy-named Jack Nasty Face.

Women disguised as men caught aboard were put ashore, but a harsher line was taken with homosexual goings-on. John and Bill had a bit of a drink and a dance followed by a fumble below decks. They were found guilty of "connecting" and hanged.

More violence in The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs which was the prehistoric equalivalent of flogging a dead horse, only in this case it was a dino. Bill Oddie, the BBC wildlife presenter of choice following the success of Springwatch, presided over a test to discover if T Rex and triceratops fought each other. As if anyone cared.

As both died out 65 million years ago, this wasn't easy. Lifesize working models of the creatures' heads were built, the force of their bite was measured, and computer graphics recreated the big fight. This seemed little more another excuse to extend the Walking With Dinosaurs franchise and proved as lumbering as those prehistoric monsters.

Much more fun was building another legendary creature to try to fool the public in Loch Ness Monster: The Ultimated Experiment. Jez Harris and his team, who make monsters for movies, had to build a convincing animatronic Nessie, while ex-marine commando James Wakeford's job was to keep it afloat long enough to pull off the hoax. Lucy the plesiosaurus was less hi-tech than Oddie's monsters but this more home-made, eccentric inventor approach made this more enjoyable.

The trials were not without difficulty. The mini-submarine - unwisely bought sight unseen over the internet - to attach to Lucy proved difficult to operate. It was declared a "floating deathtrap" and abandoned. Instead Lucy rose from beneath the water thanks to three divers.

People at a loch-side campsite got excited when they spotted the humped monster. Little did they know that moments later she sank into the deep, dark waters. The team managed to salvage her for another attempt.

Their secret mission could be judged a success. Ian Fleming - Bondmaker considered the life of the creator of the world's most famous spy James Bond, although I wonder what use is a secret agent whose secret identity is not much of a secret.

Some 100 million Bond books have been sold and half the world's population have seen an 007 film. But what of Fleming himself? This dramatised documentary, with Ben Daniels as the writer, was at pains to point out the similarities between Fleming and Bond. This rather made nonsense of the writer's claim that "bits of me creep in but he's almost entirely a product of the imagination"