TELEVISION / The Bard: an honest burger

AN AMERICAN who visited Shakespeare's house in Stratford commented that among the relics on display were 'an ample supply of Shakespeare's mulberry tree, which seems to have extraordinary powers of self-multiplication'. Then there was the Bard's oak chair, recipient of so many tourist behinds that it had to be refurbished on a regular basis. This was 1820, and Washington Irving was witnessing a Shakespeare industry that was long established.

The Irresistible Rise of William Shakespeare, Act I of BBC2's 'Bard on the Box' season, began by asking: 'Does Shakespeare really deserve his superhuman status?' That is the question, and one which was not going to be answered. Instead there was a chronological account of how, as American academic Gary Taylor said, Shakespeare had been 'adapted and marketed in different packages' for centuries. Everyone wants to put the Bard in a box of their own, and because of his 'infinite interpretability' they can. In an absorbing, if haphazard, hop through history, we see how David Garrick used Shakespeare to boost his own status, and how the Romantic Poets used him to boost theirs, how politicians arrogate him as a paid-up party member, and academics reclaim him as neutral. The programme takes us up to John Patten's bluster from the 1992 Conservative Party Conference: 'What will they give us next? Chaucer with chips? (Hoots of laughter.) Milton with mayonnaise? (More hoots.) Mr Chairman, I want William Shakespeare in our classrooms, not Ronald McDonald] (An owl's nest of hoots. If he'd used the gags about Keats with ketchup and Pope with Pepper, the delegates might well have been hospitalised with amusement.) Out out, damned McDonald's. Make mine a Bardburger and Shakespeare shake (you can use those puns for free, John).

It was the right programme to open the season. After we have been reminded of the diverse ends to which Shakespeare had been put, we can't grumble about any new ones. Playwright, poet, mulberry-log salesman, credit card . .

. So why not botanist? 'It's tempting to believe that Shakespeare was a gardener by profession,' says David Bellamy in the first of the Will's World (BBC2) series of short films, looking at aspects of Elizabethan life. This week's subject was gardens, so the Falstaffian narrator strode round authentic 17th-century shrubberies while planting apposite quotes about apricots to convince us that a sound knowledge of trees will help us appreciate the Tragedies. In upcoming episodes of WW, it will no doubt be tempting to believe that Shakespeare was, among other things, a chef and a doctor by profession. The daftest history lesson since Newman and Baddiel.

Will's World, Will's World, partytime, excellent.

Another regular 'Bard on the Box' slot is a selection of one- minute snippets and sonnets, while a curtain billows and random words from the chosen text drift irritatingly in and out of view. At the end the reader's name appears and the piece takes on a new significance. The fun comes from identifying the speaker before the end of the speech. We've had Shakespeare the Gardener, now for Shakespeare the Gameshow. Who could that be behind the stilted rendition of the 'Upon the King' soliloquy from Henry V, his voice catching for a moment before the words 'our careful wives'? That's right, Prince Charles. And who delivers a heartfelt Sonnet 29? 'When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, / I all alone beweep my outcast state . . .' Of course, Neil Kinnock. And for tonight's star prize, who recites the song from Much Ado About Nothing? 'Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more / Men were deceivers ever.' I'll name that one in two lines: it's got to be Germaine Greer.

Shakespeare coincidentally appeared on another gameshow on Friday, Wipeout (BBC1) with Paul Daniels. The gist of the show is that the contestant chooses categories of questions from an on-screen selection. One such was 'Your Bard'. 'I only know of one bard so that's a clue,' squeaked Daniels helpfully, but the contestant opted for a different set. More alarming, though, was the previous round, which featured the topic 'Gulf War Terms'.

What fun] The screen filled with squares labelled 'Friendly Fire' and 'Scud Missiles', while small Paul twittered on: 'Remember - the prize is a wonderful holiday in New England.' I was surprised he'd sunk so low. But not a lot.

Scrimpers (C4) is essential cult viewing. Ray Brooks and his young sidekick Rick Ball, who boasts of making tables out of old cardboard tubes, meet hordes of hoarders. The interviewees do not pinch pennies for the sake of the environment - which is never mentioned - nor, in every case, because they need the money. They do it because they are obsessed. Meet Jacky Moase and her daughter Jakki - even names are recycled - who bring home sackfuls of clothes from jumble sales and then admit that they are too busy going to jumble sales to sort their pickings out. Other scrimpers construct filing cabinets from Shredded Wheat packets, buy tins of sweets on special offer and sell them to their children, and use space economically by setting up workshops in their bathrooms. You can also save money on expensive straitjackets by sewing the arms of one old shirt to those of another.

The producers of Between the Lines (BBC1), aka Cop the Dead Donkey, are not so thrifty. The material from the programme's initial formula was wearing thin, so for the third series they threw it out and bought a new one: Tony Clark (Neil Pearson) has to resign from his job in the Complaints Investigation Bureau, taking up private investigation instead; Harry Naylor's wife dies; he ends up quitting the force himself; the woman who Clark chats up actually says no. Also this week, the Sun sends the daring duo to Tunisia in search of an MP's former homosexual partner. It then becomes one of those Christmas episodes of Only Fools and Horses in which the heroes are spirited off to a location idyllic enough to distract us from the battle between the turkey and our digestive systems. And Naylor's resignation has shades of when Yes, Minister became Yes, Prime Minister and the supporting players handily got jobs at No 10 at the same time as Jim Hacker. The dialogue and characters remain fresh, but Between the Lines is swapping new formulae for old.

Allison Pearson is unwell.