The Worst Christmas Of My Life (BBC1) House Of Agoraphobics (C4)

Ever have one of those days? Like finding yourself naked in your drunken female boss's bedroom. Or turning up on the doorstep of your in-laws' house wearing a black bin bag as a nappy. Or then, mistaking the pantry for the toilet during a blackout and peeing all over the Christmas goose.

The first two series of The Worst Weeks demonstrated that Howard Steel's life is one long disaster. Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em looks like a model of health and safety compared to Howard's accident prone existence.

This Christmas doesn't look like being any different if the first episode of The Worst Christmas Of My Life is anything to go by.

He's looking forward to baby Emily's first Christmas - if he lives to see it. A bottle of champagne is knocked over and seeps into the electrics at the office party just as Howard takes the microphone for the karaoke. It's no consolation having gay first aider Lance on the spot to administer emergency treatment because he uses the kiss of life to start snogging Howard.

And so it goes on as Howard faces Christmas at the in-laws, where "relieving himself over my wife's goose" does nothing to endear him to father-in-law Dick, especially as he slips in some pee and hits his head.

Back from the hospital, Dick is asked if he's feeling better. Yes thank you, he says - "Now I've had my split cranium sewn together and I'm not lying face down in a puddle of my son-in-law's urine".

Things go from bad to worse. Announcing to the family that your father-in-law has died is a mistake - especially when he's very much alive.

The jokes and set-ups in The Worst Christmas Of My Life may be telegraphed in advance but that doesn't stop them being funny. I won't hear a word said against a show that can provide several laugh out loud moments. How many other alleged TV comedies can claim that?.

The three "guinea pigs" featured in House Of Agoraphobics had nothing to laugh about as Professor Paul Salkoskis set out to cure them of the panic attacks that make it impossible for them to leave their homes.

Trainee GP Archana hasn't left the hospital campus where she lives for months. Her husband has moved to a new job in Kent but she's too scared to join him. Single mum Su can't walk her daughter to school and, for 31-year-old divorced Simon, his parents' flat is his prison.

The plan is for them to live together and help cure each other. First, there's a big hurdle to overcome - getting them to the house. It takes hours of coaxing and pleading to do it, something those who don't suffer from it find hard to understand.

"It's as if someone is asking me to walk off a cliff with a blindfold and trust them there's a net underneath," explained Simon.

Cinderella,

York Theatre Royal

It gets boring reviewing this theatre's annual pantomime. There are only so many ways of saying this is the best pantomime around - which it is.

It occupies that position because it looks like a production where everyone has made a big effort to please the audience.

They've done more than just tick the boxes needed to fulfill the obligations of pantomime. There's an enthusiasm and imagination that shows writer, co-director and dame Berwick Kaler and the entire team have thought seriously about what their fans, who return year after year, want.

Cinderella also looks, in Nigel Hook's designs, fabulous and costly - right down to the ponies pulling Cinderella's carriage to the ball.

The show has fewer gimmicks and follows a more traditional route than most Kaler scripted-pantomimes.

It could do with a bit of trimming but this is mostly glorious stuff as Suzy Cooper's excitable Cinderella tries to hook up with her Prince Charming. Kaler is his usual exuberant self as Thelma, and ably partnered in women's frocks this year by a skipping Martin Barrass (in his 21st year in York panto) as fellow ugly sister Louise.

Best of all is regular baddie David Leonard, dolled up as both Baron Stonebroke and Baroness Von Pratt (no relation of mine, incidentally).

Sian Howard's Fairy Godmother is a joy, "nephew" Vincent Gray steps from the chorus to play an engaging Buttons and even the scene-stealing crocodile from last year's A Lad Aladdin is back by popular demand.

The sight of a crocodile at the wheel of a pink limousine outside Castle Howard is one of the strangest sights to be seen at the theatre this or any other year.

* Until February 3. Tickets 01904- 623568.

Steve Pratt