Last Night's TV: To see ourselves as others see us, as the poet understood, would be a mixed blessing. But suppose you were Paul Gascoigne, trapped within the tramlines of a tabloid tragedy.

SAVING GAZZA
Channel 4, 10pm
EASTENDERS
BBC1, 8pm

To see ourselves as others see us, as the poet understood, would be a mixed blessing. But suppose you were Paul Gascoigne, trapped within the tramlines of a tabloid tragedy.

Gascoigne, we know, has had trouble adapting to life after football, and has come to resent his famous self, the clown we call Gazza.

Imagine, then, what it would be like to turn on the television and see your mental failings exposed, and to observe your estranged family agonising about how to fix you. Or, failing that, get you out of their lives.

That, roughly, was the story of Saving Gazza, a documentary which began as an exercise in autobiography, but developed into a faintly odious mix of reality TV and pop psychology in which Gascoigne was the absent star, and his family the exploited cast.

Gascoigne was in the film for just a few minutes. After a breakdown which involved being sectioned twice, and two months in rehab, he had returned to live with Cheryl, his ex-wife, and their three children. All had agreed to provide video diary footage of their lives together.

Gascoigne's contribution was brief. He was shown putting the rubbish in the wrong bins, and preparing for a night's camping in the garden. He crept through the house at night, filming his family asleep, and during the day he was asked by Cheryl why he hadn't been eating. His dressing gown hung open and he patted his stomach, which was not fat.

He listed his disorders - food, mood swings, anxiety - not mentioning the drink. What would you normally do now, Cheryl asked. "Get pissed," he replied.

Not long after that, he disappeared. His mood had darkened, and he had reacted badly to being refused access to his ex-wife's bed. Two weeks later, the tabloids discovered him on tour with Iron Maiden. Not, you might say, what the doctor ordered.

The possibility that Gascoigne was running away from the documentary was not explored. Instead, the fly-on-the-wall turned its insect eye on to Cheryl and the children, and their increasingly desperate attempts to cope with the way Gascoigne, in his absence as much as his presence, was dominating their lives. Cheryl - a sympathetic soul - was filmed watching their wedding video, and crying.

Tracy, an addictions therapist who is happy for her consultations to be televised, told Cheryl: "You have a pattern of opening up your house and letting him leave you." Soon, at Tracy's urging, the whole family was in Portugal, aiming to tell Gascoigne to get help or face never seeing them again. Happily, this intervention took place off-camera. Unhappily, Gascoigne took the second option.

In EastEnders, little Lauren was confessing to her father, Mad Max, that it was she, not her mother, Tanya, who had tried to kill him.

He took the news as well as could be expected, telling Lauren: "Everyfink's gonna be all right. I ain't gonna let anyfink go wrong again."

Sadly, history tells us that Max's word is not his bond. His mouth has a habit of writing cheques that his brain can't cash (he is an insurance salesman). But he also loves Tanya, even though she buried him alive in Epping Forest and left him for dead.

Max visited Tan in jail to try to sort things out, but Tan, a hairdresser, was not for turning.

"Why don't you just tell me the truth?" Max demanded. "I am," said Tan, coming over all Samuel Beckett. "I did it. Me." She was lying, obviously.