Heroes BBC2, 9pm Inside the medieval mind BBC4, 9pm It was a big moment for Heroes-worshippers last night. Did Nathan and Peter survive? What did they all do next? And were they still living in fear of having their heads excavated?

Heroes BBC2, 9pm
Inside the medieval mind BBC4, 9pm

It was a big moment for Heroes-worshippers last night. Did Nathan and Peter survive? What did they all do next? And were they still living in fear of having their heads excavated?

We got some of the answers and a lot more questions in the first episode of series two. Nathan clocked in right at the start, looking like Jim Morrison in his hirsuit phase (we can assume from that that his political career exploded along with his brother). Peter was at first nowhere to be seen, though as he was officially the Character Least Likely To Be Killed Off After Series One, you knew he'd turn up, if not inside a steel storage container in Cork. Four months on, Matt was fully recovered and working for NYPD while caring for the child seer, Molly. Claire, Mr Bennet and family were recreating their suburban Utopia in California, and Hiro was back in feudal Japan meeting his childhood hero on what will hopefully prove to be more than a comedy diversion (it was just distracting).

We don't know about all the others yet, but there was one significant omission, the single most important character in series one, without whom series two might really suffer: Sylar. He was being run through by Hiro last time we saw him, but that doesn't mean he's not coming back.

Sylar would be a loss and not just because Zachary Quinto has the creepiest eyebrows in the business. His deliciously menacing character largely drove the narrative last time. Last night, someone was playing cat and mouse with the chosen ones and Hiro's dad was the first on the hit list, but was it Sylar? It didn't look that way, but let's not write his obituary just yet.

If reports from across the Atlantic are fair, then this series is not going to provide the same breakneck pace as the first, with more time spent on that pesky business of explaining what the heck's going on. But there's stuff happening. Mohinder's joined the Company to help Noah Bennet destroy it from within and we've already met four new heroes, a boy at Claire's school who can fly, a man who can turn metal into gold and a brother and sister, Maya and Alejandro, who are fleeing south America to seek help in the US for Maya's little problem (she cries a deadly disease and her brother cures it). But what's their mission? If you've gone and saved the world in series one, you've not left yourself much scope for the follow-up. We'll suspend judgment for a while yet.

"Women are but Satan's bait, poison for men's souls," thundered the Italian cardinal Peter Damien in the eleventh century, and he wasn't even considered to have strong views on the subject. The medieval period was a time of ingrained societal misogyny springing from - or at least justified by - the biggest grudge in history, Eve's succumbing to Satan's temptation. Yet, at the same time, this was the age that gave to the idea of romantic love, the fictional story of Lancelot and Guinevere and the real-life one of Abelard and Heloise.

All this was explored in fascinating detail by Professor Robert Bartlett in the second instalment of Inside the Medieval Mind, which is shaping up to be a top-notch series. It could more than hold its own on BBC2, but is instead augmenting BBC4's growing reputation for innovative, intelligent programming.

Bartlett's apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of medieval writings is such that we get glimpses, not only of the lives of the rich, but also those of ordinary men and women whom he wills us to look at, not with distaste, but respect. Make a note of it for next week: this is an hour well spent.