Rebus (ITV1)

Balderdash & Piffle (BBC2)

HOW dolly to barder Ken Stott's jolly old eke again in a latest TV version of Ian Rankin's books about Scottish detective Rebus.

You'll have to excuse me if I lapse into Polari after being given a lesson in the once-secret language of gay London. The entertaining and educational - how often can you use those two words together? - Balderdash & Piffle demonstrated that wordplay can be interesting.

But first, Rebus. He was previously brought to TV screens with John Hannah who was considered by everyone, including himself, to be too young for the role. Stott fits the part like a glove and, in something of a TV first, even smiles. Followers of this fine actor's career in series like The Vice and Messiah have probably never seen him do this before.

There was precious little for him to smile about after several prominent citizens were found dead in pools of blood. Their veins had been opened and they'd been left to bleed to death. Tiny coffins containing smiling baby dolls were left at the scene, leading Rebus to a Scottish museum run by an old flame eager to be won back by his wit, charm and love of Hibernian Football Club.

Like any TV detective, Rebus has a sidekick. DS Siobhan Clarke (Claire Price) gives as good as she gets, necessary as Rebus refers to her as "sort of Robin to my Batman". They make a sparky pair of crime-fighters. Rebus is a valuable addition to the roster of TV cops.

Presenter Victoria Coren and the Balderdash & Piffle team have been doing detective work too, appealing to the public to help trace the origins of words in the Oxford English Dictionary. The evidence is then presented to the OED editors to try to convince them to include the information in their publication.

For reasons never explained, the series began with the letter P. Filmed reports showed the evidence provided by the public. Adam Hart-Davis, trying to trace the origin of the phrase "going pear-shaped" had to sit in the oldest flying Tiger moth while the pilot looped the loop to prove his theory that the pear-shaped loop was the reason for the saying.

Playwright Mark Ravenhill revealed the secrets of Polari. I assumed when listening to Julian and Sandy on radio's Round The Horne in the 1960s that all the talk about eke, riah and lallies was a figment of the writers' imagination. It turns out to be your actual underground language used as a sort of code at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

OED experts wouldn't listen to Coren's pleas that "gay" was used to denote homosexual or lesbian before the date given in the dictionary, despite evidence offered in a short story and songs. This wasn't good enough for the experts.

They did relent on ploughman's lunch, which the OED said dated back to 1970. Coren had written proof that this snack was "invented" in the early 1960s as a marketing ploy to promote English cheese.

It wouldn't be right, however, to call this a "bona dish" - that doesn't mean good food but nice bum in Polari.