TV Eye: Pass the bucket

On a grossness rating of one-to-10, Nip/Tuck has always hovered near the 10 mark, but Monday's start of series three flew off the scale into territory that was utterly revolting. It opened with the end scene from last season's finale - The Carver slashing Christian as he lay sleeping in his bed, then Sean identifying his dead partner's body and a saccharine funeral service. Proceedings halted as Christians coffin got stuck going down.

It was a cheat, Dallas-style. Christian was not dead, he was dreaming. "I'm stuck," he intoned, to make sure we got the point. Then he confessed to Sean that The Carver had raped him. He hasn't told anyone else, certainly not the police. He is too much of a man.

Back home, in his sterile apartment, Christian and porn-star Kimber lay on the couch watching one of her movies, to no effect. "I can't go on like this ... I have needs," whined Kimber. Listless and depressed, Christian proposed to her, without getting off his back. Those scenes were intercut with ones of Julia demanding a divorce from Sean, who refused. He was stuck too.

Sean got an emergency call from the cops. Another attack by The Carver? Cue vomiting cops outside the crime scene, a window being smashed to let out the stench, and no one allowed to enter without a mask. How bad can this be? The suspense built. The camera moved around the cluttered house and eventually settled on a body. A huge, live body.

It was an immense woman called Mama, who'd been stuck on her couch for three years and whose skin had necrotised into the fabric of the couch. The ultimate couch potato.

So Mama, and the couch, were trucked to the hospital, where Sean, then Christian, in a valiant attempt to get back to work, pumped her full of dozens of needles full of local anaesthetic so they could cut the rotten flesh away. The lingering shots of decomposing flesh were nauseating - then Mama died on the, ah, operating couch.

The other main strand of the episode was the introduction of a tough-talking new detective, female, British, who seems determined to get at the truth of Christian's attack. In a new twist on ethical practices, she visited Christian in his apartment, which she correctly assessed as cold, tidy, anal, just like its occupant.

"You want my pain? Let me see yours," droned Christian. So this weird cop told him a sad tale, they moved to the bedroom, the inevitable happened, Kimber arrived, they had a threesome. Huh?

If this is a sign of things to come, there's not much to like about Nip/Tuck. Scenes of a fat, rotting woman, and ageing Christian announcing he was back because he was into three-way sex are not enough to keep this viewer up till 11pm on a Monday night, thank you.

Thank goodness for UKTV on a bad-weather Labour weekend though. UKTV screened 12 hours of the Sharpe series two days in a row - an oldie but still a goodie. Sean Bean, the Napoleonic wars in Spain, English cads, swords, duels, loyalty and men of honour. Did I say it starred Sean Bean? It was pretty good to dip in and out of; canny weekend programming.

Not so clever is the TV3 programmer who has pulled 24 out of its Friday night slot and scheduled it at 11pm on Saturdays. Bad ratings, apparently. As Sean would say to Christian: Where is the loyalty, man? Where is the loyalty?