On TV

Space Race (BBC2)

SOMETHING'S not right if you spend more time worrying about the title than the programme itself.

The Golden Hour strikes me as a bad name for a medical drama. Not because I don't understand what it means. Even if I hadn't read the advance publicity, a character helpfully defined "the golden hour" early in the opening episode. "Get it right in the first hour and we stand a good chance of saving lives and reducing long-term disability," said a medic for the benefit of puzzled viewers.

Golden Shot, Golden Oldies, even Golden Shower, would be okay. But The Golden Hour, no thanks. And it doesn't even last an hour - this is a 90 minute programme, so should more accurately be called The Golden 90 Minutes (or 69 Minutes without the commercials).

The series itself is Casualty with wings as doctors are flown by helicopter to the scene of major incidents. For starters, we had a horrifying road accident involving a bus, a car, two children and an elderly woman. This must have cost a fortune to stage as it was repeated every five minutes, along with flashbacks to the lives of doctors, the injured and their relatives.

"I'm going in," said the doctor as he sliced open the chest of an injured boy and rummaged around inside. His assistant was ordered to massage the heart as a third doctor talked them through the operation over the telephone, rather like a pilot on the ground talking down a member of the public trying to land a plane.

The programme seemed determined to outdo Casualty in the gore department. The special effects people had built a lifelike (from what I could see through the hand covering my eyes) set of internal organs so we could see the heart beating after Jane flicked it with her finger to kick start the patient's ticker. Jump leads would have been easier.

The inspector wasn't convinced all this was necessary, as he contemplated whether to give the chopper docs NHS money. "A massive waste of time and resources," he said, echoing my feeling about the programme.

Space Race, as the title suggests, chronicles the struggle between the superpowers to be first into space but, by the end of the first part, had hardly got off the ground.

The Americans and the Russians scrambled to recover the services of top scientists and blueprints to the V2 rocket that could lead them into outer space as the Second World War came to an end. The most shocking fact concerned the slave labour used to build the German V2s. More died constructing them than were killed by the rocket itself.

This is obviously going to be a thorough job with painstaking reconstructions and minute detail. It's interesting up to a point but it is only rocket science.

Annie Get Your Gun, Sunderland Empire

THIS little seen Irving Berlin musical - apparently the early price charged by the great man for staging or showing this 1946 gem was a little steep - shoots from the lip with a series of showstoppers. There's No Business Like Show Business, Doin' What Comes Naturally and I Got The Sun In The Morning are more familiar than this retelling of the Annie Oakley story. According to this legend, the famous sharpshooter deliberately lost a match with rival Frank Butler so he'd marry her, inspiring the sentiment You Can't Get A Man With A Gun. Most women could think of a better use for the firearm these days.

TV actor Steven Houghton continues his move into stage work with an athletic if slightly over-serious Frank. Although tall for the role - the girl born Phoebe Ann Moses was under five feet - and, thus, lacking that childlike appeal, Rebecca Thornhill has a confident charm as she tackles Annie's path from backwoods hick to world star.

The surprise package is Charles Lawson, barely recognisable as Corrie's Jim McDonald behind the whiskers of Buffalo Bill. His rare excursion into musicals, as the man who made Annie Oakley famous, looks long overdue. Setting the show as entertainment for a US army base and a questionable depth of talent within the cast are the only question marks over a hotshot night's entertainment.

* Runs until Saturday. Box Office: 0870 602 1130

Viv Hardwick