At first he thought it was an elaborate academic joke."They used to try animals for a variety of offences," the director says. "Often for murder, because animals were running loose all the time and occasionally injured or killed people; but also for minor offences, like taking mice to court for destroying the harvest. In one famous case, a swarm of locusts were tried in absentia, as they obviously couldn't be got there in person." From this bizarre source material, Megahey has managed to conjure a compellingly strange world of "witches", spineless clergymen and corrupt barons who rule through perpetuating superstition among their cowed subjects. Writer/director Leslie Megahey, a former series editor of Omnibus and head of music and arts at BBC Television, conceived the film after a friend gave him a book about the medieval French practice of subjecting animals to the same judicial processes as human beings. In court, his adversary is the wily Pincheon (the late Donald Pleasence), advocate to the ruthless Seigneur (Nicol Williamson). The Hour of the Pig Boxing Day, 10pm BBC2 As that half of the population that swooned over him in Pride and Prejudice already knows, Colin "Darcy" Firth looks drop-dead gorgeous in a period costume. The period he is dressing up for in is the Middle Ages in France.

In this Screen Two, he plays Richard Courtois, a principled young lawyer whose ideals are sorely tested when he embarks on a practice in the backward rural community of Abbeville. Soon after arriving, he is required to defend a pig, owned by an alluring gypsy, Samira (Amina Annabi), against the accusation that it murdered a child. He even attempts to tell a fairy-tale as Hans Christian Alan Partridge-sen and to sing a hilariously ghastly version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", before it all ends, as always, with a bombshell.On my Christmas wish-list for Santa is the hope that the team will set aside their other projects for long enough to make another series of Partridge very soon Pretty please.JR. The man with the wardrobe that taste forgot spends most of the show trying to convince one of his guests, the Chief Commissioning Editor of BBC Television (Schneider) to re-commission his series live on air.

In between fawning to him, he manages to insult a prissy bell-ringer (Rebecca Front), a cross-dressing TV chef (Kevin Eldon), and a disabled golfer (Marber) and his wife (Mackichan). "That we all wear blazers and ties? What is Establishment about our comedy?" The answer is its success "Ah, like British Gas. We're going to float ourselves on the stock market," he smiled.All of these people are re-united for with Alan Partridge, a Christmas special in a studio mock-up of the oleaginous chat-show host's Norwich home. "What does Establishment mean?" Iannucci wondered before the launch of Saturday Night Armistice. Knowing Me, Knowing Yule.. Fri 29 Dec, 9.40pm BBC2 Armando Iannucci and co - the Iannuccinis? - have had quite a year.

With Dave Schneider, Iannucci has performed in the topical BBC2 comedy show Saturday Night Armistice; Steve Coogan has had his own character- based six-parter, Coogan's Run; Doon Mackichan has starred in Glam Metal Detectives and Agony Again; and Patrick Marber has scripted an acclaimed West End play, Dealer's Choice, as well as directing his own adaptation of Miss Julie for BBC2.At this rate, they are in danger of being labelled the New Comedy Establishment - a tag they are keen to play down. Sheen, Dennis Hopper (right) and screenwriter John Milius provide some high-octane reminiscences, and the editing (by Michael Greer and Jay Miracle) is some of the sharpest you'll find in any documentary. Coppola's film and Hickenlooper's should both serve as examples to future directors, in different ways.RG. He replaced his first lead actor (Harvey Keitel) with Martin Sheen, who then suffered a heart attack. Add to that typhoons, nervous breakdowns and Marlon Brando (presiding over the chaos like Buddha) and it's easy to see how Apocalypse Now became Coppola's folie de grandeur.But at least this crackling by-product came out of it.