Flood

Sometime there are television programmes that are so bad they are good and then there are programmes so bad they should carry a government health warning 'this programmes can seriously damage your sanity' Tonight's new drama on ITV Flood was so bad that it should be used to teach media students how not to make a television drama.

Imagine if you will that a huge tidal surge has hit Wick in Scotland killing 300 people - the Prime Minister is in Australia so his deputy flies North to see the devastation for himself. Within hours of him returning to London, a discredited scientist who is hated by the meteorological community because he thinks that the Thames Barrier is in the wrong place (keep up, it gets worse) tells COBRA that the barrier will breach in three hours because the surge is heading south and there is a spring tide due - it will come as no shock to hear that ALL the other scientists have been talking out of their bum and our weirdo scientist was right all along, the barrier won't be any use.

OK the scene is set London is about to be flooded. The surge is thundering down the east coast at a rate of knots and the mad scientist's son, who just happens to be a consultant engineer for the barrier, has to hot foot it up the river because the engineers on the barrier think that there is a fault that only he can fix, oh and by the way the chief engineer on the barrier is his ex-wife!

I think that I actually gave up the will to live when we were shown the surge belting along the Thames flooding everywhere in its wake but all we were meant to worry about was the fact that it was heading to central London. Well pardon me for caring but shouldn't we have been at least a tad concerned that everyone living either side of the river to the east of the Thames Barrier has just been wiped off the face of the earth never mind all those people living on the east coast of England!

With a cast that included Tom Courtney, Robert Carlyle, Joanne Whaley and David Suchett, I think the question we need to ask is were they all held hostage and forced to do this against their will or were they just short of money and couldn't get any voice over work?