If...The Oil Runs Out (BBC2) - The If... series makes a drama out of a crisis but the latest demonstrated that fact and fiction make uneasy bedfellows.

The result was as hopeless as trying to mix oil and water, an appropriate enough phrase as the subject was the escalating global oil crisis.

The year is 2016 and the world is plunged into crisis as the age of oil comes to an end. The warning signs have been ignored, so few are prepared for the drastic changes in lifestyle demanded by a lack of oil. The race is on to the ends of the Earth in a desperate search for black oil.

So far so good in this real life disaster movie. The statistics were frightening. America's oil production peaked in 1971, Britain's in 1999. All the world's biggest known oil reserves are in the Middle East and naming those countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iran) helped put world affairs - and conflict - into perspective.

Americans are addicted to oil, like a heroin user to drugs, and they're running out of the black stuff.

If... insisted on putting a fictional scenario together with interviews and issues that were real. The soapy sub-plot about a woman trying to have a baby and lead an oil-drilling team in Alaska was poorly written and unnecessary.

So was the drama involving her American parents adjusting to life without a car and dad getting beaten up in a nasty outbreak of road rage at the petrol station.

I dreaded each time we left the experts to return to dreadful Jess and her domestic problems. More interesting was worrying how the world, notably America, would adjust to having no oil.

Literally going to the ends of the Earth to find the last oil well means untouched areas of natural beauty and its wildlife are at risk as man gets more desperate to fill up his car.

The oil that's left is very politically difficult to get to, making it a massive challenge for the energy industry and consuming country's governments. It's not so much that oil is running out but that the oil market can't expand to meet increased demand.

Shortages are created when demand exceeds supply, creating hoarding which creates more shortages. It's easy to get sucked into this vicious spiral. Dreary Jess and her fictional problems undermined the shock value of the real situation.

We should have been considering how people and communities, built and operated around oil, would have to change to meet an oil-less society, not being asked to care about Jess taking a pregnancy test in the middle of drilling a wildcat well.

More important were those warning that if we don't prepare for the end of the oil age, we're in for a very hard time. To ram home the point, the end caption told that "while you have been watching this film the world has consumed 3,550,000 barrels of oil".

Tonight's The Night,

Sunderland Empire

WE don't wear it well regarding Ben Elton's fluff-weight script, but when it comes to reproducing the sawthroat singles from rock god Rod Stewart, then look no further than Tynesider Ryan Molloy. He transforms from shy Gasoline Alley, Detroit, mechanic Stuart Clutterbuck to become a posturing rock frontman for Rod to be proud of.

There are plenty of leggy lovelies in the cast, including Tiffany Graves who doubles as Satan, offering Stu the soul of Rod Stewart to transform his life, and Baby Jane, Rod's ex-manager, who informs Stu the best bit of Rod isn't his soul. She also, confusingly, has a role to play as Maggie May, Rod's famous problematic bed-mate.

There's plenty of pithy humour as you'd expect from Mr Elton but the clichd plot does little more then stitch together some of Rod's greatest hits. Jeff Edwards gets most of the best one-liners as drink and drugs-raddled Stoner, the guitarist who hires Stu.

Meanwhile, the girl who Stu loves and leaves behind, Mary (the lusty-voiced Rachel Tucker), is gifted the classic ballad Reason To Believe.

Pathos, rather than power, has tended to be Rod's hallmark so his more reflective songs tend to be over-powered by better proportioned singers. Thankfully, Molloy, and Daniel Robinson as best friend Rocky, pitch their performances with a rod of (slightly rusty) iron.

As an over-sexed celebration of Rod's superb career this is a sensation, just unscrew the part of your brain which requires food for thought before you sit down.

Runs until Saturday.

Box Office: 0870 602 1130

Viv Hardwick