Television preview

Ithink I'm beginning to discern a difference between BBC and ITV costume dramas. It's in the BBC's love of/slavery to detail: the costumes themselves, the interior decor, the fruitier sort of supporting character actor. That's not to say that the BBC dramas are necessarily better. Take LWT's version of Jane Eyre (Sun ITV), which I'm sure will be pursued by critical derision all the way from Wapping to Canary Wharf. Packed into just over two hours, Charlotte Bronte's tempestuous love story is intensified to a fever pitch more associated with Mills and Boon than true 19th-century romance. Cliff "Heathcliff" Richard eat your heart out.

This may seem laughable to English Lit purists, but it's surely true to the original appeal of Bronte's novel - a swirling, proto-Freudian romance, with its dark, masterful, Byronic hero and its independent and intelligent heroine. Ciaran Hinds - last seen stealing Ivanhoe from the series's nominal star - makes a humane Rochester, Samantha Morton a suitably quivering Jane. Kay Mellor's excellent script reinvents Charlotte Bronte as fast, popular, prime-time television.

Deacon Brodie (Sat BBC1) comes packed with all the BBC's traditional attention to detail. This is a jolly shaggy dog story from the tail-end of the 18th century. Billy Connolly is very appealing as Brodie, a notorious Edinburgh "character" - a slippery womaniser and master carpenter who specialised in door locks and hangman's gallows. His downfall is busily being plotted by Patrick Malahide, his opponent on the town council, and a strong cast also includes Siobhan Redmond and Ewen Bremner. My one criticism - since we're talking details - is that everyone seems to have very good teeth for the 1780s.

Balls to Africa (Sun BBC1) packs up a soccer team of trendy comedians (Nick Hancock, Angus Deayton, Skinner and Baddiel) and sends them to the poorest parts of Africa. Yes, we're talking Comic Relief. The idea is that their football team, Sporting Noses, plays matches against local teams while the celebs report back on how the last Red Nose Day money was spent. Flip, post-Have I Got News for You comedy and Third- World poverty are the uneasy bedfellows, with soccer as the metaphorical duvet. The result is surprisingly entertaining and moving - as was intended. The thought also occurs that it would make a good starting point for a Ben Elton novel.

It's a better idea than Omnibus (Sun BBC1) and its celebration of Mothering Sunday - a film looking at stars and their mothers (Spice Girl Emma Bunton, boxer Lennox Lewis and Claire Bloom among them). It's the sort of staple "idea" that women's weeklies consider year after year and the laboured pun of the title - "Stars and Mas" - speaks volumes.

I don't know why, but it's very hard to imagine Roger Moore ever having had a mother. He seems to have emerged into the world fully formed and perfectly groomed, and, instead of mewling like other babies, quizzically raising one eyebrow at the world. BBC2 is rerunning The Saint (Sat BBC2), the glam 1960s adventure series which is the main reason we love Moore. This opening episode has the additional delights of Yootha Joyce and Tony Booth as hard-boiled Russian agents. What a loss Joyce is going to be whenever someone gets round to making a sitcom of Margaret Thatcher's The Downing Street Years.