House (five); New Street Law (BBC1): The unthinkable happened in House. Hugh Laurie's doctor actually wanted to talk to a patient.

As a medic who'll usually do anything to avoid contact with sick people, this was a first. But then the patient was a 15-year-old faith healer who claimed he took instructions from God.

When his team showed surprise that House wished to communicate with the bedridden faith healer, he told them. "God talks to him, so it would be arrogant of me to assume I am better than God".

The scene was set for a clash between the perpetually tetchy House's unstoppable belief in himself and the boy Boyd who healed a crippled woman with the words "thank you for letting me be an instrument of God's love for you".

Hugh Laurie's House gets better - and so do his patients - week by week as his line in sarcasm that passes for bedside manner gets nastier.

Confronting Boyd, he apologised if calling him a faith healer offended him. He wondered if he'd prefer his work to be called "divine health management".

Boyd overstepped the mark by laying hands on a liver cancer patient and causing her tumour to get smaller, although it gave a twist to the weekly race to diagnose a mysterious disease.

Once House declared "I'm on a mission from God" you suspected that even he was losing the plot. The writers of New Street Law, the BBC's latest legal series, have never found it.

Four episodes in and the series shows no signs of improvement with cliched characters, dull stories and decent actors left high and dry without anything to do or decent to say.

The signs were promising as Charlie Darling, the joker in the pack, represented gameshow host Kenny Logan (played by gameshow host Les Dennis) in a libel case concerning tabloid tales of him liking to wear nappies when he's on the job.

Logan questioned Darling's ability. "Are you sure this guy is the best?," he asked.

"In your price range," he was told.

This promisingly sleazy case was abandoned by the writers halfway through in favour of two other cases - a single mother accused of death by dangerous driving and a father alleged to have repeatedly punched his son.

John Hannah's idealistic barrister Jack Roper led the defence but had a few problems of his own. The twitching when interviewing the child-beater he was defending indicated none-too-subtly that he had issues of his own in that area.

"My job is to defend him not to like him," he informed those who commented on his sour expression.

Jack's still all right with Laura, who works for her father's rival chambers, but the spark between them has yet to ignite. This is a pity as New Street Law needs something to get it going. A legal series that can't even make the courtroom scenes interesting, let alone exciting, deserves to be charged with wasting viewers' time.