It came as a shock, really

n Seven Days (ITV, Sunday) n Kiss Me Kate (BBC1, Monday)

SHE made a lovely corpse, if a wee bit green about the gills. You can't go wrong with a death, especially the death of a romantic lead on the brink of consummating such a prickly, taboo-plagued courtship. So, of course, the electrocution of Assumpta Fitzgerald, despite many a hint in the media beforehand, proved shocking. But didn't they make a dog's dinner of the aftermath? Being charitable, we might say that the script deliberately undercut our expectations of wallowing sentimentality - but this is Ballykissangel (BBC1, Sunday, Monday) we're talking about: a series which has systematically milked every Irish cliche in the book, the whole pawky, soulful, cussed, lovably roguish package. And then, given a long-awaited declaration of mutual passion and a cruelly cataclysmic death, it suddenly discovered the virtues of restraint, when what the folks at home really needed was a good old cathartic

boo-hoo.

Father Peter (Stephen Tompkinson) shed a tear or two, the resulting pinkness around the eyes increasing his uncanny resemblance to a laboratory rat, but your reviewer watched dry-eyed. Twenty-four hours later came the final episode of the series, and here, too, the grief was oddly underplayed. No flashbacks to Assumpta (Dervla Kirwan) in her prime, just a punctilious, anticlimactic tying of loose ends. Her briefly favoured husband was laid out with a punch (thus confirming Father P's transition from milksop do-gooder to red-blooded male). The villagers expressed their affection and respect for the priest, their loving memories of the mouthy publican, and their tacit approval of the relationship between the two. A muck-raking tabloid journalist was sent on her way. Only that impromptu wake on the hillside, complete with keening women and recitations of Yeats, hit the required note of sadness.

Father Peter tamed his tormented soul sufficiently to christen Niamh's baby and strode off into the sunset, taking his crisis of faith - and a very promising storyline - with him. Meanwhile Bally-K will be back with another series in the autumn. ''Life goes on,'' as various characters told each other. Not without your two leading actors it doesn't. Or at least, not without losing a few million viewers.

The prospect of the venerable Lynda La Plante instructing the nation on contemporary youth culture is pretty depressing (not to say downright insulting), but you have to admire the woman's industry. Once upon a time, back in the glory days of Prime Suspect, La Plante had incisive, subtle things to say about females working in a male culture, and the monsters that a monstrous situation can make of us. But that was before she became television's most prolific scriptwriter. There's not a lot of subtlety in Killer Net (C4, Tuesday).

All the acid colours, whizzy camerawork, and ultra-violet light on white T-shirts could not disguise a fundamental ambivalence on the writer's part: on the one hand, thoroughly blase about the drugs and clubs and techno bars and computer porn; and on the other, heightening their unfamiliarity (at least, as far as the bulk of the audience is concerned) to whip up a moral panic. For this is a drama with a message, warning us about the pernicious lack of regulation on the Internet. It is also, behind the contemporary trimmings, an old-fashioned, formulaic thriller.

Tam Williams plays a drippy psychology student working on an experiment to test whether people will inflict pain if absolved from responsibility for doing so. (Anyone who did not see the ironic twist coming, go to the back of the class.) Humiliated by his mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know girlfriend, he sought comfort surfing the Net and stumbled upon a sinister game (''Welcome to Killer Net, you are about to plan and execute the perfect murder.'') Will Scott play, free from responsibility for his actions, only to discover that there are consequences in the real world? More than likely.

And now a special message for any insomniacs out there. Try Invasion Earth (BBC1, Friday), BBC Scotland's multimillion pound sci-fi series. Better than Mogadon. However, I did persevere (at our second attempt, my co-viewer fell asleep) and can report that it's no more preposterous than most small-screen science-fiction. Episode one was short on plot development and long on military hardware (the RAF offered their full co-operation), the alien looked disappointingly like a soldier ant crossed with a motorcycle despatch rider, but Vincent Regan made a toothsomely charismatic fighter pilot. Whether any of the other characters achieve three dimensions remains to be seen. Phyllis Logan, clutching that clipboard as if her life depended on it, had my heartfelt sympathies.

Scottish Television's Seven Days (ITV, Sunday) is not so much a magazine programme as an attempt to translate the multi-section Sunday newspaper to the screen: an ambitious mix of hard-nosed political probing, arts coverage, showbiz froth, and celebrity commentators. First on were David Hayman and Dorothy Paul reviewing the week's news, the former with commendably-informed authority, the latter with - well, what did you expect, asking Dorothy Paul about the European single currency? (''Oh! I thought you said emu . . .'') Cue several minutes of witless reminiscence about how hard it was getting used to the ''new money'' after the introduction of decimalisation. Another misguided attempt to marry politics and folksiness followed, in the shape of a vox pop on the streets of Dunfermline. And what did the good people of Fife have to say about the complexities of monetary union? Predictably little.

More promisingly, the debate on Scotland's cinematic ''renaissance'' managed to transcend the usual tone of self-congratulatory puff (thanks again to David Hayman). Loraine Webber has yet to master the art of the intelligent (or even intelligible) question, but doubtless she'll get the hang of it in the end. Let's hope so, anyway. With our own Parliament just around the corner, Scotland badly needs a magazine/discussion programme capable of seriousness and frivolity, and even (well, we can all dream) a certain irreverent poise.

In Kiss Me Kate (BBC1, Monday) Caroline Quentin plays a formidable, articulate psychotherapist beset by hopelessly inadequate men. Sophisticated situation comedy for therapy-literate thirtysomethings? Not exactly. The biggest laugh was for a sight gag involving a man dressed as a kangaroo.