But Neal Ascherson's deliberately factual and unmellifluous commentary script was often so terse that the programme maker, Martin Smith, seemed to feel obliged to use shots of emblematic intensity for the menial task of illustrating simple statements. When Stalin attended a certain meeting, for instance, we saw him mounting the podium. Examples of both hopping and strolling can be seen on television every night, and last night's Cold War (BBC2) had no problem finding a strong stock of pictures. Overdo it, and the screen becomes an embarrassing blank to be filled with odd shots while the commentary runs its course. It can't be long before a car with a confederate flag painted on the roof goes arcing through the torpid air.. Television, they say, is all about words.

But it does seem a shame to use only half a medium - it is like hopping on one leg when you can walk on two. But Maximum Bob's true ancestor is that good ol' classic of Seventies teatime TV, The Dukes of Hazzard. It's not aiming to be Twin Peaks, it's aiming to be Hamish Macbeth or Ballykissangel, except with reptiles instead of sheep. In Maximum Bob, no one has as much depth as the alligator.No, this is familiar, stranger-in-a-kooky-land Sunday night fare.

A judge in Ally McBeal has already come to the same conclusion. Are they, by any chance, related?BBC2 are promoting Maximum Bob as a successor to Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure, but fans of either programme will be asking for their money back, too. David Lynch's series was considerably more strange and disturbing than Sonnenfield's, not to say considerably more baffling. Northern Exposure was set in Alaska, a rather less obvious territory for an offbeat comedy- drama than the deep South, and it was built on soapy human interest. Sonnenfield has rung up Quirks-R-Us and ordered a boxload of idiosyncrasies. And he should ask for his money back: he's been sold second-hand stock. Yanking open the mouth of an unfortunate defendant, Bob announces that he can tell all he needs to know about the people in his courtroom by examining their teeth.