Wonderland: the Secret Life of Norman Wisdom, Aged 923/4 BBC2, 9.50pm Torchwood BBC2, 9pm As an unrepentant devotee of Norman Wisdom's films, Wonderland: the Secret Life of Norman Wisdom, Aged 92 3/4 , was a powerful, moving and desperately sad documentary.
It recorded over some months last year the comedy immortal's inexorable, inevitable descent into enfeebled old age. More to the point, the programme followed Norman's family - combative daughter Jackie, gentle son Nick and saintly daughter-in-law Kim - through an increasingly common dilemma: how best to care for an aged relative.
Jackie, Nick and Kim live in Sussex, 200 miles away from Norman. Jackie wasn't going to move in with him on the Isle of Man, she firmly stated, citing the fact that she was mid-divorce, plighted to her old dog, Hudson, and too argumentative to reside with her equally argumentative dad.
So saintly Kim temporarily left husband Nick and their 12-year-old son to be Norman's island carer. He entertained her, she said. Less entertainingly, he also squawked "Kim-o!" at her all too often, in the same grating way he used to squawk "Mr Grimsdale!" at the character who was his stooge in many of his films.
That's when Norman wasn't asleep in front of the telly, or bossing Kim about as a passenger in her car, or resisting her attempts to make him take a bath.
In the end, taking their doctor's advice about their father's declining physical health when he came to them in Sussex, Norman's family put him in a Manx old folks' home. Here, Norman would have constant access to the thing that he really needed (perhaps even more than he needed his family): an audience.
For whenever Wonderland trained its camera on him, Norman Wisdom performed. He did the same for every member of the public - his public - who hove to: in ice-cream parlours, car parks, airports, on sea-fronts. And despite not always knowing exactly what Wonderland's TV camera wanted of him, Norman remained certain what he was going to give it: 110% clowning, daft faces, the gift of foolishness.
"They're making a documentary," it was explained to him early on, "not about Norman Wisdom, the Star - Norman Wisdom, the Man."
Norman considered sombrely for a millisecond. "Norman Wisdom, the Boy!" he insisted, launching into song. As Wonderland neared its end, we saw Norman in his new communal abode entertaining a captive crowd of oldsters by crooning one of his hits, Don't Laugh At Me ('Cause I'm A Fool).
Laughter was impossible at this moment as something became unbearably plain: the light of vigour seemed to have stopped shining in Norman's eyes. Typically, though, when the camera focused on him at his song's conclusion, he managed a trademark cheery trouper's wink and gaping grin.
Poignant wasn't the word for it. Cue Wonderland's end-credits; cue tears across the land from Norman-admirers everywhere.
However, it was the tears we saw Jackie Wisdom shed that were Wonderland's most affecting ones. Norman's daughter did herself no favours on the show. Putting her dog first. Waxing frankly bitter about always having lived in her father's shadow ("I've never been Jackie Wisdom - I've always been Norman Wisdom's daughter"). It all made her easy to dislike - until those tears, angry at the terrible injustice of her father's decline.
There were no tears - only searing gay snogs between irksomely secretive Captain Jack and maddeningly inexplicable Captain John - as Torchwood returned. Cardiff's rift in time and space led to much running about, as well as gay snogging, but not to anything of note actually happening. Torchwood? It's a charred log of a drama.
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