The battle of Hastings

HOTEL Inspector Ruth Watson finds herself engaged in a fresh battle of Hastings as she starts a new series. Divorced ex-civil servant Peter Mann is less than civil over her observations about what's wrong with his sea front hotel. After an early confrontation, he describes her as "a cross between Darth Vader, Genghis Khan and Gordon Ramsay all rolled into one".

The Grand is, in the opinion of Watson (and, after seeing what the programme makers show of the place, I tend to agree), no longer very Grand.

For starters, the faded frontage with its peeling paint, rusty pipes and dead plants doesn't impress. The hotel is all very tired and seedy with the strangest reception area Watson has ever seen, requiring two bells to be rung before anyone comes to attend to her.

As for the bedrooms: "dated and wasn't even lovely 20 years ago", with towels she wouldn't even use on a dog. "I wouldn't store my dustbins in this bathroom," she says, followed by a four-letter word exclamation.

You can tell from the start that Watson and Mann aren't going to see eye-to-eye by the way he tells her, "I'm in the middle of a sentence, I would like to finish", when she dares to criticise him.

The dining room doesn't impress her either. It's stuffed to the roof with bizarre mementoes from around the world. What she thinks at first are dried flowers on the tables turn out to be dead flowers. The full Sussex breakfast makes her feel ill.

Mann admits having problems, using a very civil service-like turn of phrase about "falling down on the functionality of the hotel".

This conflict is everything we expect from a show like The Hotel Inspector. Mann really doesn't seem interested in putting the hotel back in business, so why did he invite The Hotel Inspector round? The publicity, possibly.

Most unexpected is Mann's U-turn. By the end of the show he's following Watson's suggestions and telling her, "Ruth, it's been a pleasure".

No guns are involved in Watson's clean-up of The Grand. Plenty of weapons are brandished in Suburban Shootout, the bizarre comedy-drama about gun-toting gangs of housewives in leafy Little Stempington.

With Barbara Du Prez (Felicity Montagu) behind bars, her gang's in disarray as rival gang leader Camilla Diamond (Anna Chancellor) exerts her authority over the neighbourhood.

Newcomer Joyce (Amelia Bullmore), more at home wielding a vacuum than a machine gun, is doing her best to keep Barbara's gang together, despite her plea that "I'm a housewife not a hit-woman".

Barbara has bequeathed Joyce her gun. "Be strong and use her wisely, and above all remember the safety catch sometimes sticks," she tells her.

Her gang members are missing her. As Pam says, "She taught me how to crush a windpipe, withstand pain, study otter faeces."

Top dog Camilla isn't impressed by the new girl. "Barbara may look like an old dog biscuit, but she's got balls. All you've got is a recipe for venison en croute," she tells Joyce.

The husbands remain ignorant that the women are responsible for Little Stempington's zero crime rate. And that a troupe of asylum-seeking Eastern European ballet dancers are being used by the Diamond gang as sex slaves in their mobile casino. This gives a whole new meaning to The Nutcracker Suite.

Impressionable PC Haines worries on seeing the dancers in their tights. "Do you think it's all those unstable nuclear power stations that are responsible for their unfeasibly large codpieces?", he says, sounding like a line from a Joe Orton play.

Suburban Shootout is certainly no Dad's Army with its bad language, violent outbursts and smutty humour. The initial joke of seeing ordinary housewives behaving like vicious gangsters will have to be developed if the series is to keep the comic momentum going.

But the idea of imprisoning the asylum seekers in sheds at the local garden centre is a laugh. "Please mind your head on the hanging baskets," say the women as the dancers are marched through the centre to be locked up.