See No Evil: The Moors Murders (ITV1); Hannibal (BBC1): The fuss about whether it's right and proper to make a film about Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley is likely to blind people to the fact that See No Evil is a very good piece of TV drama.
The makers have done their best to consult relatives of the victims and the approach is resolutely unsensational. Not until the closing stages of the first episode is any violence shown with the killing of Edward Evans.
A caption at the beginning is sufficient to remind us of the horrific crimes - "Between 1963 and 1965 Ian Brady and Myra Hindley murdered at least five young people. They buried four of them on the moors outside Manchester".
Neil McKay's script isn't so much concerned directly with the story of Brady and Hindley as with those that their actions affected, notably Myra's sister Maureen and her husband Dave.
As yet - and the concluding episode is tonight - there's no indication of what motivated the pair to commit murder. But there is something undeniably creepy about Brady as he draws impressionable Dave into his criminal ways.
He even boasts of killing someone. "You stood on their grave," he tells Dave, a reminder of their trips to the Moors.
Another strand has George Costigan's detective determined to solve the mystery of a missing girl, unaware of the full extent of the terrible events which eventually unfolded.
The shabby Sixties look gives the drama real atmosphere, aided by superb performances from leading players Joanne Frogatt and Maxine Peake as sisters Maureen and Myra, Sean Harris as Brady and Michael McNulty as Dave.
Whatever your feelings about dramatising the story, there's no doubting the power of this excellent production.
Hannibal, on the other hand, was as subtle as a herd of elephants charging over the Alps which, of course, is what this latest epic drama-documentary from the BBC was all about.
Except that the crossing (by 90,000 foot soldiers, 12,000 cavalry and 37 elephants) of the mountain range was only a small part of Carthaginian general Hannibal's campaign to defeat Rome.
"War is all I've ever known," he told us near the start. And, golly, there was a lot of war in this 90-minute production.
The elephant man made no bones about his intention. "Alexander took 50,000 men from Greece and conquered the world. Not bad for a Greek. But we can do better," he said.
Thirteen minutes into the drama and someone declared, "Soon this will be over". Those of us who'd read the listing knew he was mistaken as there were another 77 minutes to go. Confusion came in the 35th minute with the Romans saying, "Here it begins" and then, after an hour, "It's over".
As everyone knows, it's never over until the fat lady sings - or screams if one of Hannibal's elephants crushes her to death.
That was one of the tricks employed by the Romans, frightening the creatures so they turned round and stampeded their own army.
Captions helpfully put names to faces on the screen.
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