Frances Grant: Girls just wanna have fun

Bored with the same old sexual identity and looking for a new thing? Well, Victorian lesbianism looks like fun. "This could catch on," I thought watching the first offering from TV One's Winter Season Sunday Brit drama slot.

Forget dykes on bikes. Nineteenth-century-style lesbian love looks like a much more decorous sort of pastime, judging by this two-part adaptation of another Sarah Waters girl-on-girl bodice ripper, Fingersmith.

All it requires are hair extensions, a creamy complexion, more corsetry than a Madonna video from her Gaultier era, a lot of giggling and polka-dancing in one's chemise, erotic peeling off of pearl-buttoned gloves, romantic kissing in lacy night-gowns by candle-light and bedding down in a four-poster.

Anyone who saw the first TV adaptation of one of Waters' romances, Tipping the Velvet, might have been surprised by the tameness of the action in this one.

But Fingersmith was perhaps more in tune with the times. The Victorian era was one in which even pianos were not allowed to show any leg, let alone a young madam hot for another chick.

Of course, we weren't watching for the kinky stuff. But when the show kicked off with one of its protagonists "born in a mad house" and the other in a room with a good view of the gallows, we knew these young ladies would be ripe for mutual solace.

Throw in Charles Dance as a sadistic uncle with a library of dirty books, Imelda Staunton as a dishonest old crone, and an evil villain out to steal one of the young lady's fortune and it's not surprising a little soft-focus escapism was in order.

With a plot more convoluted than a Victorian hair bracelet, the mockney accents, bad teeth, pursed lips, mutton chops and an asylum full of grotesque loonies, Fingersmith was pure gothic melodrama. But there's no ignoring the fact that a lesbian melodrama has double the normal amount of heaving bosoms.

This time around we were at least spared the dildo and actress Keely Hawes' excruciatingly bad music hall drag performances.

Talking of excruciating performances, it was with trepidation that we greeted another round of NZ Idol earlier on Sunday evening. And sure enough, the show seems to have taken the ear-splitting singing and that r'n'b wailing to new levels.

The bad singers are still out there and they're badder than ever. "Paul, I'm going to make a voodoo doll and I'm sticking pins in it," vowed one furious reject.

Ellis would deserve it. Taking the cocky and woefully misguided down a peg or two is part of the show, but the judges need to pick their targets. Ellis' treatment of one hopeful contestant singing his heart out was wantonly cruel, telling him that there was money in his voice - as a neighbourhood rodent killer. Watching the guy's face light up, then crash in hurt as the sarcasm hit home was painful.

You have to wonder whether the tired Idol format will draw as big an audience as last time. In the meantime, I've developed a shameful addiction to the equally well-worn America's Next Top Model. Perhaps it's the influence of Fingersmith and the hope that the girls will stop bitching and take a leaf out of the Big Brother Uncensored book.

A bit of girl-on-girl action between those photo shoots would really get the show sizzling, as well as wipe the smirk off the face of the tyrannical Tyra Banks. They've got Banks, the purse-lipped chaperone, the fetching looks and access to all that fetishistic fashion wear. It could be just like Victorian times.