Where law of the gun still holds

n THE X-FILES (BBC 2) - OH NO! A religious sect member capable of changing gender is a prime suspect in a murder spree. A woman called Marty seduces a businessman in a motel who is later seen to convulse and die. Then she becomes a he and leaves just enough of a trail for Mulder and Scully to link the two murders to a remote town, inhabited by The Kindred, a sect of religious isolationists famous for their abstinence and pure Christian beliefs.

n PETS WIN PRIZES (BBC1) - SOME programmes simply suck the will to type from your fingertips. However, as this is the third series of Dale Winton's dog's dinner, there must be someone watching. In tonight's episode the usual line-up of celebrities and their pets, which include Barbara Windsor, Lisa Goddard and Eamonn Holmes - as celebrities, not pets - get to admire the new village green set and indulge in games. Personally, I'd rather eat Chum than turn on.

n SISTER WENDY'S STORY OF PAINTING (BBC1) - WACKY nuns - God bless 'em. You can't beat footage of someone such as Sister Wendy Beckett interpreting the coy smile of the Mona Lisa as the model's ideas of what she would do with Leonardo Da Vinci if only he wasn't gay and she could wrestle him from behind the easel. This is just one of the many opinions of the untrained art critic as Sister Wendy wanders through the pre-historic caves of Lascaux; visits the remains of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

n EURO96 - LIVE: THE FINAL (BBC 1/ITV) - THERE is something reassuring about the fact that 400 million people will be tuning in to watch a game of football. Let's just hope they don't have to witness another plod such as the World Cup final with the winner being the team with the best penalty kicks. In my opinion a draw after 90 minutes should be followed by extra time with only seven players on each side. Every five minutes in which a goal isn't scored results in another man lost. The end result will be the goalies battling it out in a giant game of kerby. There is also something reassuring about the fact that England aren't in it.

n JEFFREY BERNARD: REACH FOR THE GROUND (C4) - FOR 50 years Jeffrey Bernard has oiled his typewriter keys with alcohol, reporting the antics of Soho's residents on a weekly basis for his Low Life column in the Spectator magazine. Now 63, he looks back on a life strewn by wreckage from four marriages and almost drowned in booze, which was punctuated by high times with Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and John Osborne."

n FALSE ARREST (BBC1) - EVERY serial in the Seventies took its lead from The Fugitive, featuring a man ``wrongly convicted for a crime he did not commit''. Tonight, the man's now a woman in this two-part American mini-series, starring Donna Mills as Joyce Lukezic whose cosy world is shattered by the mafia-style murders of her husband's business partner and his mother-in-law. The concluding part is shown the following night. Can't wait.

n BUFFALO GIRLS (C4) - ONE of the finest pieces of American television was the adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel Lonesome Dove, a eight-hour epic charting the cattle ride of retired Texas rangers into the wild frontier. In Buffalo Girls the west has been won, the indians defeated and all that remains of the old days is the Wild West Show run by Buffalo Bill Cody. While Lonesome Dove starred Robert Duvall, Buffalo Girls attracted Angelica Huston to the role of Calamity Jane. Her friend, brothel madam Dora DuFran, is played by Melanie Griffith. The plot spans 10 years and two continents and revolves around Calamity Jane. Should be worth settling down to.

n LAW WOMEN (BBC1) - JUSTICE may be a lady, but she has few handmaidens. An officer of the law is more likely to be a man than a woman. Despite the popularity of Prime Suspect, the Metropolitan Police has more than 300 Detective Inspectors yet only 10 of them are women. DI Sue Hill is one of them and the first subject of this three-part series follows her from maternity leave back to Hounslow Police Station, where she is one of the officers in charge of CID. Between running a couple of rape investigations, she makes anxious phone calls to the nanny and takes trips to Mothercare. The remaining two documentaries in the series focus on one of London's top criminal defence solicitors - June Venters and the deputy governor of Maidstone Prison, Stacey Tasker.

n MURDER ONE (BBC2) - BULLET-head Daniel Benzali begins to blow away the prosecution as whispering Ted Hoffman, the star of the most gripping show on TV. What a guy! What a boss! How could Justine, one of his team, betray him and work with Richard Cross after our Ted told her that Cross was evil incarnate and as oily as a greased can? So now it's her time to pay the price while the pendulum in Neil Avedon's trial is beginning to turn his way. If the tension is turned any tighter I'll be admitted to Doctor Lester's clinic.

n THE OFFICE (ITV) - THE plot for this sit-com pilot reads like a stress dream belonging to most comedy writers. Robert Lindsay plays Norman - middle manager of Trans Atlas International - who is preparing to address the chief executive and all the divisional managers. However, an interview with his frightening new boss Hillary (Isla Blair) leads to an awful misunderstanding after which Norman finds himself stranded naked in the wrong office. Would you like to see six more episodes?

n GUNPOWER USA (C4) - IT is now impossible to write anything about gun control without mentioning the small Scottish town that atrocity should not have touched. Dunblane cannot be forgotten and never will. It has sapped any of the shock and replusion from this two-part documentary on the American right to bear arms which is now dividing the country. However, Gunpower USA presents further proof that gun control is required in Britain before another town is added to the list of Hungerford and Dunblane. Tim Pritchard's first film spends a single summer in Omaha, consistently voted the nicest place to live in the US. Yet even here gun culture has it's worshippers. During one night's filming the crew come across Nathaniel Jackson, who has just accidentally shot his best friend while playing with a stolen handgun. A few weeks later another tragedy hits when a policeman is shot on duty and dies.

n TIMEWATCH (BBC2) - FIELD Marshall Sir Douglas Haig is perhaps the most famous military man to have the tag The Unknown Soldier draped around his neck. Yet the title of the Timewatch documentary is an indication that the BBC team plan to unearth a new Haig, rather than ``The Butcher of the Somme''.

For 60 years he has been satirised as the worst caricature of the British officer class, a ``donkey'' general who sent hundreds of thousands of British soliders to a futile death in the mud of Northern France and Flanders.

However, as a Sandhurst military historian said to a class of Army cadets: ``The fact that this Army won the greatest series of victories in British military history means we must take him seriously as a commander.'' Drawing on rare footage of the Field Marshall and eye witness accounts, the documentary, narrated by Kirsty Wark, re-examines the life of the most controversial British commander of the 20th century.

n FILM: TIME BANDITS (C4) - SHOWN as a tribute to HandMade Films, the independent British film company which contributed to the success and revitalisation of the film industry, Time Bandits is as much a tribute to the wild mind of Terry Gilliam. Today the director's eyes are on Hollywood, where he's scored successes with 12 Monkeys and The Fisher King. However, 15 years ago he kick-started his fantasy-over-reality trilogy in a London suburb. There a young boy is snatched from his suffocating suburban existence for a series of adventures in time. It's not Ken Loach, but it's brilliant.

n MEN BEHAVING BADLY (BBC1) - AFTER hearing Deborah admire the breasts of a TV actress and seeing her give her friend Judy, who is staying with her, a kiss, Tony (Neil Morrisey) concludes with willfull glee that Debs is going through a ``lesbian phase''. Conviced Judy and Debs are having an affair, he generously offers to join in their sexual activities. Meanwhile, Gary (Martin Clunes) has been branded a coward by Dorothy after his behaviour in a road-rage incident, so he hires someone to fight to prove his manhood. Men - we're all the same.

n FRASIER (C4) - So no-one safe from the relentless drive to down-market commercialism? Now that a new station manager Kate Costas (Mercedes Ruehl) joins KACL-780, what of Dr Frasier Crane's phone-in show? Will he cave in to her outrageous demands of discussing, sex, more sex, and still more sex? Or will he continue to burn up in the wee small hours as his show gets kicked into the graveyard slot? Find out when the third series of Kelsey Grammer's hit show returns to Channel 4, with all the old favourites, such as lodger Daphne Moon, Frasier's ex-cop father, and his terminally up-tight brother Niles.

TOMORROW