But to hear these men’s accounts from their own mouths, to see them laughing as they describe four or more years of being blindfolded, chained up and tortured … it’s as headspinning as seeing somebody climb out of a grave. And it certainly puts those “true life”, my-car-went-over-a-cliff-and-I-survived programmes in their place.By the end of the series, you’re left thinking that maybe television is just as suitable a medium for this surreal episode as a history book. Maybe the events are not sold short by being adapted for the small screen Because at bottom, the story is simple and personal. The weirdly straightforward situation was that Hezbollah wasn’t going to hand over its captives until it got something in return. And it was a weirdly personal situation, too, because it revolved around a few men who wanted a few hostages released, and so took a few hostages of their own, leaving a few other people to make decisions.It’s this stark, personal nature of the story which Hostage puts in the foreground, unclouded by discourses on fundamentalism and diplomacy.

As Brian Keenan writes in An Evil Cradling: “The immensity of our kidnappers’ conceit was beyond belief. They had murdered, maimed and taken hostage a handful of men, how many exactly we did not know, but we reckoned possibly fifteen. With these fifteen men, some like ourselves chained to walls in apartments, in prisons, or in underground cells, they hoped to hold the world to ransom.”. Daringly, The Bill (ITV) ventured into the shower at a women’s prison, where an inmate made a pass at an undercover police officer.

There was quite a bit of advance publicity about this, yet lesbianism is not exactly new to pre-watershed drama. Emmerdale and Brookside paved the way, while EastEnders has always had its share of gay men. Even Coronation Street has a transsexual, and there are signs that, with barely 11 months to spare, the venerable soap is finally moving into the late 20th century. An Asian family is at long last taking root in Weatherfield, and mark my words, lesbians won’t be far behind. If they can just forget about ratings for a second – a forlorn hope, admittedly – drama producers might now think about embracing reality along with lesbianism.

For just as not all lesbians are butch with crew-cuts, not all aren’t. Yet in swerving hard to avoid one stereotype, television has crashed headlong into another The TV lesbian has a fabulous figure and flowing locks. She is a modern Siren, her haunting voice floating across the airwaves. “Tune in, tune in,” she cries, and we are easily lured.
Contrary to the hype, the shower scene in The Bill was not a momentous TV event, like the Beth Jordache kiss in Brookside, and the television watchdogs would not have snarled had it been a teeny bit racier, but let’s not quibble. The story was sound, the acting decent, and at least the prison had slightly more in common with Holloway than with Betty’s Tea Room in Harrogate, unlike the chintzy place that dear old Googie Withers ran in Within These Walls of blessed memory.Still, there are prisons and prisons. A palatial mansion beside a Swiss lake is not what you’d call a prison, unless you are 13-year-old Athina Onassis.