Desperate Housewives Channel 4, 10.00pm

Relocation, Relocation Channel 4, 8.00pm

IN general, the writing in Desperate Housewives leans towards the literate. It was a little surprising, then, to hear the voice of the dead Mary Alice note that "spring comes every year to Wisteria Lane". Perhaps she once visited Scotland and noticed that we are granted respite from icy blasts only in the even-numbered years.

Besides, it is hard to see how they know that spring has come to the lane. The sun shines like a klieg light all year round, granting the women the sort of perma-tanned radiance Scots can only mimic by sitting with their legs too close to the fire. The men could meanwhile signal ship-to-ship with their dental work and the entire suburb has the hyper-real sheen that is the mark of the true American dream: to live on a movie set.

This, one suspects, is what they call satire.

Spring, in any case, was not living up to Mary Alice's claims last night. It wasn't bringing hope and new life. It was bringing another round of suspicion, deceit, paranoia, betrayal and exploding houses.

It would have come as no surprise if someone had said that every rose in those perfectly-tended gardens contained a worm.

Paul Young, the dead Mary Alice's husband, has had a wormy look about him from the start. He has a secret, but that's no secret. He and Mary Alice may once have abducted a child, and that child may well be Zach, the teenager creepily obsessed with Susan's daughter, Julie. Susan, meanwhile, may be on to Paul, but she doesn't quite know what she's on to. Her mysteriously combustible kitchen may - or may not - signal Paul's attitude towards her attentions.

As the series approaches its alleged conclusion (I wouldn't bank on that) , it grows ever-harder to summarise.

Gabrielle is pregnant because her husband Carlos has tampered with her contraceptive pills. Carlos is headed for an eight-month "government-sponsored sabbatical" in the pokey while Gabrielle struggles to guess who the father might be.

Lynette and Tom are at odds over the reappearance of one of his old girlfriends. Bree and the pharmacist are seeing one another on the sly. Meanwhile, in a surprise development, the sun shines.

The production values of American TV drama are such that they can make almost any show seem better than it is.

Sunlight procurement problems aside, I suspect that this soap would seem rather less impressive if it had been called Bearsden Housewives.

The proliferating sub-plots can't conceal the fact that the central mystery - why did Mary Alice kill herself? - feels like thin stuff. You could get more tension out of an old rubber band.

Still, Susan (Teri Hatcher) is not letting us escape easily. At the end of last night's comings and goings the police were refusing to treat her suspicions towards Paul seriously. A private detective, one of the few black characters in this white-bread fantasy, was engaged. "I think I'm in over my head, " said Susan. "Do you think you can help me?" The plot inched forward when he replied, "As a matter of fact, I know I can." Bet he can't.

Relocation, Relocation began with the authentic sense of the urban "hamster's wheel lifestyle". Dean was a sales manager driving 3500 miles a month. Samantha was a part-time bank clerk. They desperately wanted to spend more time together, preferably on the Isle of Wight, preferably in the pub and/or restaurant business. So far, so sane.

In stepped Kirstie Allsopp and that bloke named Phil to round up some suitable properties. One looked ideal, a traditional pub available for pounds-350,000 that was returning a profit of pounds-125,000 a year.

Then the logical flaw made an appearance: the existing owner was putting in 100 hours a week on this nice little earner.

The couple settled for a smaller alehouse and claimed, after a year, that it was the best thing they had ever done. But they also admitted to spending all the hours God had made available on the place.

Spending more time together?

Downshifting? You could almost hear the hamster's wheel spinning.