Collisions and catastrophes

Secrets of the Dead (Channel 4, Tuesday)

Seeking Pleasure (BBC2, Wednesday)

Tobacco Wars (BBC1, Tuesday)

Ruby's American Pie (BBC1, Wednesday)

The Larry Sanders Show (BBC2, Sunday)

`The sun went dark, the rain was the colour of blood, there was winter for two years, then drought, famine and death." Not, as you might think, the sleeve notes from a Spinal Tap record, but a contemporary account of the disaster which historian David Keys believes hit the planet more than 1,300 years ago. Seeing as we're about to be deluged in the next few months with lists of the most "significant" events of the year, decade, century and millennium (most of them re-hashed, unimaginative cut-and-paste jobs with a bias towards the recent past), there was something wonderful about being told that the most important event of the last 2,000 years was something we'd never even heard of, and, in Secrets of the Dead: Catas- trophe, the first half of a two-part documentary, Keys posited what looked like a very convincing theory on the subject.

Beginning with evidence discovered in Queen's University, Belfast, from ancient tree rings, showing evidence of a climatological catastrophe in the middle of the sixth century, Keys gathered information from the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica to adduce that a volcanic explosion at Krakatoa in AD 535, as powerful as 2,000 million Hiroshimas, had altered the planet's climate for several years, throwing societies around the world into confusion and chaos. The programme-makers travelled to Krakatoa (wisely ignoring the title of the 1970s disaster movie, which placed it East of Java - it's actually to the west), which, even in its current, semi-dormant state, is a rather terrifying place where you're apt to be hit at any moment by a lump of red-hot rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, and found some (albeit limited) supporting evidence for their claim.

This was a cogently-argued programme, with some fascinating research, much of it from academics at Queen's, although there was a little too much of that doomy, gloomy music which seemed left over from all those documentaries last year about imminent asteroid collisions with Earth.

IN next week's programme Keys will be arguing that the Krakatoa explosion was directly responsible for the Dark Ages, the emergence of Islam, and thus by extension the modern world as we know it - so presumably it also bears some responsibility for the Eternal Beau range of products available from Argos. In Seeking Pleasure, Trevor and Jenny, one of the four couples who revealed their wedding lists to the cameras, had gone Eternal Beau mad. Everything from cups and saucers to deep fat fryers and kitchen curtains were decorated with the same, rather twee, beige, floral pattern. "The nice thing about it is that everything's octagonal," confided Trevor. "When you have someone around for dinner, it looks a cut above the rest." You could almost hear the camera crew sniggering; nothing like a bit of lower-middle-class gaucheness to keep the BBC2 folk happy. The really creepy thing, though, was that this was Trevor's second marriage, and he'd already done the entire Eternal Beau thing during his first.

Forget all those hifalutin' claims about "exploring how people use their leisure time to define their identity"; the whole point of a series like Seeking Pleasure is to find people to laugh at. Designer-label addicts Steve and Anna fitted the bill, in their matching DKNY sweatshirts and silver puffa jackets, as they went around Debenham's with their list and their barcode-zapper (Steve would have preferred a list with IKEA, but there wasn't a store close enough). They both claimed to have exactly the same taste - "We like everything very plain" - although Anna's sister confided that before she met Steve, Anna had more of a fondness for flowery frocks. Steve's sister, surrounded by all the accoutrements of her wedding list (so Laura Ashley, so 1980s) accurately pointed out how tacky and out-of-date the happy couple's minimalist plates, ridiculous cutlery and over-priced Alessi coffee pot would look in a few, short years' time.

THE most haunting sight of the week was the gaunt face of Alex Higgins, talking about his throat cancer in this week's episode of Tobacco Wars. In his heyday, Higgins was a poster-boy for smoking as the epitome of cool, sucking on a fag with the big Benson and Hedges sign behind him. Now, he's the tobacco industry's worst nightmare, this decade's equivalent of the cancer-wracked former Marlboro Man in the 1980s.

Tobacco Wars itself is an odd programme, part historical documentary, part vox pop reminiscence, part presenter Michael Buerk talking about his own experiences as a former smoker (there was a particularly strange moment when Buerk stepped out of his presenter's shoes and spoke to a faceless interviewer about his smoking - it felt as if one of the basic rules of television grammar was being broken). This is a pity, as the core of the programme, the history of the tobacco industry's shenanigans over the last 40 years, is full of surprising revelations - in particular the story of the safer cigarette developed by one company in the 1970s, but buried by the industry as a whole.

MORE American big business in the last episode of Ruby's American Pie. The American porn industry is worth $8 billion a year, more than the entire mainstream Hollywood movie business. Ruby Wax went to LA to meet some of the stars of the genre and observe them at work.

"What porno name would you give me?" she inquired of the hardcore producer on whom, supposedly, the Burt Reynolds character in Boogie Nights was based. He pointed out, quite reasonably, that Ruby Wax was a perfectly adequate name for a porn star, "though we might change the spelling to WH-A-C-K-S, for the S and M value".

Wax's strategy is simple - she cosies up to her subjects, in the knowledge that sooner or later the viewer at home will recoil in horror. It's essentially just another slight variation on that old British staple, staring at the weird Americans. But ever since Louis Theroux demonstrated that you could get more out of the format with a gentler approach and a wackier sense of humour, the style has altered subtly. As television, it works well - you're lulled into security by the pleasant chats the presenter has with the subject, and find yourself thinking "hey, these white supremacists/child beauty pageant organisers/people who believe they were abducted by Martians are actually quite reasonable". Then you're hit with the whammy, as they start speaking in tongues or burning crosses, or, as last week, taking their clothes off and having sex in front of two camera crews.

The reaction of the two crews was instructive. The actual porn crew were like any film technicians anywhere: slightly-bored looking, checking their watches to see if it was nearly time for lunch. The nice people from the BBC were a study in mortification, lurking in the corner with their heads in their hands until Ruby finally took mercy on them and they all scurried from the room.

One of the producers on Ruby's American Pie was David Blake-Knox, formerly head honcho for light entertainment and drama in RTE - hard to imagine him commissioning anything like this in his days at Montrose. Mind you, what's to commission? RTE launched its autumn schedule with some fanfare this week, but is there really an excuse for the extended summer holiday the entire station seems to take in the summer months? This year is particularly bad - there hasn't even been an attempt to do a chat show or light entertainment programme. In fact, apart from the indefatigable Duncan Stewart's Engine Earth, and two shows "inspired" by British programmes (Antiques Watch and Pot Luck), there was hardly a home-produced non-news or sport programme on all week. The only in-house name who doesn't seem to feel the need for three months' holidays is John Bowman, soldiering on valiantly with Questions and Answers, but struggling this week with an apathetic audience which seemed to have dozed off hours earlier. In previous years, there has been some attempt to blood new talent during the summer months (without great success, admittedly): this year, the strategy just seems to be to lie low and wait for the less-than-exciting prospect of Pat Kenny's Late Late Show. Gaybo, we're missing you already . . .

THERE were echoes of Gaybo's departure in the new (and, sadly, the last) series of The Larry Sanders Show. Chat show king Larry is on his final lap before stepping down from the show, and the network is giving heir-apparent Jon Stewart free rein to see what he can do - well, free rein until he books hip-hoppers The Wu Tang Clan for the show, to the horror of the ever-hovering middle management. Apparently, the Wu Tangs are "a little too urban" for the show's Mid-West demographic, in the carefully-chosen words of the execs. "Well, we can call Lenny Kravitz - he's only half-urban," snorts loveable producer Rip Torn.

One of the many joys of Larry Sanders is the fact that it doesn't have to follow the strict regulations of American network TV, because, like the other must-see currently on TV, The Sopranos, it's produced for the cable channel, HBO. Next time you hear someone say that bad language is unnecessary for good drama, point them in the direction of these two shows. Could we really take seriously a programme about the entertainment business or the Mafia where the characters said things like "oh, shoot" or "Judas Priest"? More fundamentally, both disprove that canard about Americans having no sense of irony, and both are black comedies whose raw material is shame and self-disgust - the kind of stuff that we've always been told the British excel at. With the occasional exception of Alan Partridge, British TV comedy can't hold a candle to the best American shows.

Meanwhile, back on set, Stewart is told he can choose instead from the whitebread options of Hanson, Billy Ray Cyrus or 3 Dog Night. "I have a policy," he explains. "Never bump a band that's packing heat." But the die is cast; Stewart's insistence on running a Nazi comic sketch is the last straw and the show is pulled, to be replaced with a package of "Larry's classic highlights".

This is superb television, and it's going to be over in double-quick time, as BBC2 is offering double helpings every Sunday evening (Network 2 obviously doesn't rate it so highly, parking the show in the insomnia slot on Thursday night, between Melrose Place and Thirtysomething, of all things. Come on guys - show some respect). When they're writing those lists in December, what price The Larry Sanders Show for Best Acidic Media Satire of the Millennium?