Extraordinary People: The Man Who Dreams The Future (five, 9pm); MacIntyre's Underworld (five, 10pm).

Dogs mean terrorists, snow and ice signal imminent danger and any kind of meat indicates carnage. If all these things feature in Chris Robinson's dreams, he knows to expect some dreadful event within a day or two.

Scientists treat his belief that his dreams are "a window into the future" with a large pinch of salt. Others, including an American senior advisor to the military, take him more seriously. In Japan, he's a psychic superstar who solves crimes on a TV show.

Since dreaming of the Chernobyl disaster five days before it happened, he's regularly seen some of the world's most dramatic events, including the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks.

He looks, from the Extraordinary People documentary, like the sort of the chap you wouldn't look at twice in the street. But he says that precognition was gifted to him during a near-death experience. He was "sent back", as he puts it, on condition he lived in both worlds. This is where you might start putting on your sceptical hat.

A US university took him seriously enough to conduct an experiment. Professor Gary Schwartz, who rejoices in the title of Director for Advances in Consciousness, doubted Robinson's ability until he dreamt of planes crashing into tall buildings during a ten-day experiment. Two or three days later 9/11 happened.

But hearing Robinson say things like, "When I go to sleep I can travel backwards and forwards in time and space and see things that other people can't", you can't help feeling you've stumbled into an episode of TV's Medium, in which psychic Alison Dubois assists the police with their inquiries through her dreams.

Another test, conducted at London's Goldsmith College by Professor Chris French (who also has an unfathomable job title - Head of Anomalous Research), fails to prove Robinson's powers. So too does his attempt to locate a woman whose plane went missing in the Arizona desert a year ago.

Robinson wants to use his powers of prediction for good, not to make money. To see him at work is to see a man who takes his powers seriously. He sets himself questions before sleeping, hoping he'll dream the answers. In the morning, he writes down his recollections and tries to connect them to the case on which he's working.

People in Washington certainly take him seriously. He's been working with a think tank specialising in futurology run by a former member of the White House national security council. The organisaton is working on setting up a website to collect dreams from around the world and draw up maps of events, such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters, that might happen.

Could they have predicted that ten years after going undercover to expose Wayne Hardy as one of the biggest drug dealers in the Midlands, Donal MacIntyre would return to see him again?

As a World In Action investigative reporter, he befriended Hardy, became his gym buddy and then exposed his criminal activities on TV. "He wasn't best pleased," recalls MacIntyre with marvellous understatement.

It's taken three years of negotiations through the underworld - and I don't mean Corrie's knicker factory - to arrange the meet. I can't help feeling Hardy's having a laugh at the reporter's expense in this follow-up, which is filmed with much posturing and posing and given a glossy coat to make it look like a glamorous gangster movie.

Hardy has, we're told, changed his ways after serving his time. He still surrounds himself with a strong crew of underworld associates. "Either he's gone straight or got smarter," says MacIntyre.

He's never quite forgiven the reporter for betraying him. "I'm not saying I'm an angel, but it's not nice when people are showing your life uncovered on television," he says.

This time, the story is being told on his terms - and his life has been eventful in the past decade. His brother died in a road accident, his girlfriend killed herself and their daughter is a heroin addict.

He's very protective of this daughter who is trying to get clean of drugs. He turns to the camera and says: "Don't give my daughter heroin or anything else - if I find out you are, I'll chop your effing hands off".