The Time Of Your Life, STV, 9pm
Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields, BBC2, 9pm
After six increasingly turgid weeks, The Time of Your Life dribbled away the answer to its big riddle in desultory conversations between its principal characters.
So who killed Brian on that awful night down by the river? In the end, it didn't seem to matter to anyone, especially us viewers. Brian hadn't been a terribly nice youth anyway, so you couldn't invest much emotion in his semi-accidental demise at the hands of a decent-if-misguided father who, it dully emerged, had only been seeking to protect his headstrong daughter.
In addition, the guilty father - papa to the show's central figure, Kate - had been spurned by his daughter moments before he'd seen her being dangerously grappled by Brian.
He had thus been trying - with desperate and manly cack-handedness - to win back her affections by mightily biffing the rotter on the noggin with a handy wooden rowlock. If only The Time of Your Life had been as enthusiastic about keeping its viewers' eyes open.
What was good about The Time of Your Life? Well, it was good that Kate broke her ties to the frightful stone-washed eighties denim gear she'd started out wearing, after her sudden awakening from her 18-year-long coma prompted by the events of that awful night down by the river.
Kate spent most of the last episode of ITV's lame answer to Life On Mars clad in a tartan mini-skirt, opaque black tights, slightly baggy boots and a short double-breasted black jacket.
This outfit provided The Time of Your Life's only genuine mystery: was it some more of her original 1989 schmutter that she'd recovered from her old teenage wardrobe? Or was it a knowing piece of noughties retro? We may never know.
There was something else good, too. With tragic foolishness, however, The Time of Your Life wasted its USP: the show only offered us a few brief shots of Kate utilising Britain's last fully-functioning street-corner Photo-Me booth (these wondrous machines used to lurk in the darkest corner of every Woolworth's branch or on railway station concourses, but now they're as extinct as Brian).
And not only did Kate find Britain's last fully-functioning street-corner Photo-Me booth: it was actually a magic time-travelling Photo-Me booth - a Harry Potter movie cast-off? - that allowed her to see more clearly into the past, recalling the events of that awful night down by the river. And then - miraculously - after Kate had pushed aside this contraption's curtain and stumbled out, shocked, the bally thing spookily printed a picture of the late Brian, who of course hadn't been in the booth! Or not so miraculously, given that Photo-Me booth portraits never truly resembled the folk posing for them.
But I digress. Time-travelling Photo-Me booths cry out for more use in TV dramas. They should not be spurned. The Time of Your Life: too much time passing too slowly, nowhere near enough life.
After spending eight weeks dazzling us with a variety of boys' own military whizz-bangs, the busy and effective father-and-son team of Peter and Dan Snow bowed out with a show which unexpectedly mixed a bit of political philosophy with its death-dealing hardware, its cutting-edge laser- guided Cruise missiles and Stealth bomber aircraft.
Examining the build-up to the first Gulf War on Saddam Hussein in 1991, 20th Century Battlefields seemed keen to detail all the careful diplomatic maneouvring which, under US President George Bush Sr, preceded the Iraqi despot's defeat.
What was it Dubya's dad had said, outlining his get-in-quick-win- and-then-get-out-even-quicker strategy? Oh, aye: "This will not be another Vietnam." If only the Bush boys worked as harmoniously as the Snows.
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