Who's that girl?

SPIN-OFFS can be disappointing, watered-down versions of the original, but The Sarah Jane Adventures has established itself as a successful show in its own right, with the ability to appeal to both young and old audiences.

Some of us will be watching this Doctor Who spin-off because we have fond memories of Elisabeth Sladen, who originally played intrepid journalist Sarah Jane Smith during the mid-Seventies, alongside Time Lords Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

This new series will be shown on Thursdays and Fridays, so not long to wait to see how each two-part adventure turns out. Thankfully, the all-important cliffhangers will still be present, leaving viewers dangling until the concluding episode.

“I love the cliffhanger,” says Sladen.

“The new Who episodes go so fast. I think the cliffhanger pleases a lot of people, and it’s nice to return to that. Nothing like that is on at the moment. Who’s like an express train, there’s so much to fit in.”

She should know. Elisabeth made a triumphant return to the Time Lord’s world, first in the 2005 episode School Reunion, and then in the two-part finale to last year’s season.

“Russell T Davies is a great fan of the time I was in Who,” Sladen continues.

“I went for a meal with him and producer Phil Collinson and I really didn’t know what they wanted.

“I thought it would be a homage to the original series and I didn’t want to do that.

But where they came from was just where I thought Sarah would be. It wasn’t a stretch.”

It was the fans’ reaction that really surprised her. “I truly didn’t how it would be received, but I was amazed,” she says.

David Tennant will feature in a later Sarah Jane adventure, but until then we’ll have to be content with other tales, including this opener, in which the Earth must be saved from the clutches of rhinolike aliens the Judoon, before the gang attempts to foil an alien who’s targeted Sarah Jane herself.

BRITAIN certainly hasn’t fallen out of love with alcohol – Government figures suggest that the average intake is twice what it was half a century ago – but could we have called time on our romance with the pub?

Boozers are closing down at the rate of seven a day, leading to fears that a pint in your local could soon be thing of the past.

In the documentary The Red Lion, Sue Bourne sets off on a nationwide pub crawl to some of the country’s 600 remaining Red Lions, and find out who’s drinking there.

Along the way, she hears the stories of people on both sides of the bar, and meets a wide variety of regulars. She encounters everyone from tipsy grannies to lonely souls, unravelling our complicated relationship with alcohol and finding out if it’s only in soaps that pubs are at the hub of communities.

YOU should be warned that the new sitcom Hung probably isn’t one for all the family to enjoy.

Those who aren’t easily offended may well enjoy the misadventures of Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), an embittered basketball coach whose wife has left him for a wealthy dermatologist.

His job is going nowhere, he struggles to support his teenage children, and just when it looks like things can’t get any worse, his house catches fire.

But then a business seminar and a one night stand make Ray realise that perhaps there is hope for him after all, if he’s prepared to start offering his services as a male escort.