Television preview

Now we know where Tony Blair got the idea of walking to Downing Street on that magnificent Friday morning last month. Not from Peter Mandelson; not from Cherie - but from Harry Perkins.

Harry who? Winch your minds back to 1988, to the dark old days of Tory hegemony, to A Very British Coup (Sat C4) - Alan Plater's adaptation of Chris Mullin's conspiracy thriller. Harry Perkins, played by the late Ray McAnally, was the former Sheffield steel-worker who became Prime Minister on a radical Old Labour platform. He was a Tony Benn with the common touch; a comforting Labour fantasy for the wildnerness years. I wonder if Blair enjoyed the series.

This is an inspired piece of scheduling from Channel 4. It's interesting to compare the events of the past six weeks with Plater and Mullin's vision of what would happen if Labour won a thumping great majority. It looks a bit on the paranoid side now, perhaps, and Keith Allen makes an unlikely Peter Mandelson. Perkins, by the way, entertains the US Secretary of State to a Sheffield Wednesday football match instead of Le Pont de la Tour. Clinton got off lightly.

From Old Labour to a fine new drama - Stone, Scissors, Paper (Sat BBC2), a love story written by Richard Cameron which has won the BBC's Dennis Potter Film of the Year Award. Juliet Stevenson - a superb actress whom one nevertheless often verges on finding rather annoying (perhaps it's just all those quiveringly drippy characters she plays) - is Jean, a battered wife taking refuge in clearing out her dead mother's house. Ken Stott (Takin' Over the Asylum) is Redfern, a soulful stonemason whose marriage has solidified into one long round of menial chores, meal-times and pottering about in his shed. Jean and Redfern discover in each other a kindred spirit, but in the small community in which they live, the shrapnel from this affair flies off in all sorts of dangerous directions. The writing is spare and truthful, and if you want to see how far Coronation Street has strayed into the realms of fantasy, compare and contrast with the current Sally-Kevin-Natalie menage-a-trois.

On the subject of spousage, Dale Winton, who recently disappeared from National Lottery Live (which, to be honest, wasn't well suited to his talents), now pops up to front The Other Half (Sat BBC1). Nestling into the Generation Game/ Pets Win Prizes niche, contestants have to use their powers of deduction to guess their opponents' partners. No preview tapes exist, but the thought occurs that this might make a good gauge of one's relationship. I mean, if nobody can find a reason why a couple is together, then maybe that says something. Then again, we are talking Light Entertainment.

When it comes to permanent rifts, you can't beat Antarctica. Apparently, an area of ice 200m deep and the size of the United Kingdom has recently melted into the sea. The cutting edge, quite literally, of global warming, the South Pole is turning into a potential destination for Club Med. If you don't believe me, check out Antarctica on the Edge (Sun C4).

Tectonic shifts elsewhere, as Hong Kong prepares to change masters. Riding the Tiger (Sat C4) introduces us to various players - civil rights activist, pro-Beijing politician, newspaper magnate - and Mrs Leung, a small shopkeeper. It's the powerless Mrs Leung who is most fatalistic - and thus, perhaps, the authentic voice of old China. Will the vibrant new voice of Hong Kong change all that?