Little Dorrit (BBC1) was the latest in a long sequence of TV adaptations by Andrew Davies of classic novels. This is probably one of Dickens's lesser-known works, so Davies had a hard job to introduce us to a large number of characters and situations. In fact he left us with too many mysteries. Who were those two blokes in a prison cell, speaking incomprehensibly in foreign accents? Why is Tattycoram so volatile? I don't know if I can face the effort of watching the remaining 13 episodes to discover the answers.

Somehow the first episode didn't draw me in as some other costume dramas have, and I suspect it was not only the complex plot. It was also the "star-studded" cast, which meant that one's attention was diverted by seeing so many familiar faces. Wasn't the actress playing Miss Wade in that thing about a council estate . . . oh yes, it was Shameless. And she played Myra Hindley in that other thing, so she must be up to no good. Oh, and there's the ubiquitous Bill Paterson — and the equally ubiquitous Alun Armstrong. And that's James Fleet from The Vicar of Dibley. It was refreshing to see newcomer Claire Foy as the sweetly innocent title character — although one wondered how she managed to keep her clothes so clean in that mucky Marshalsea prison.

At least it was more involving than In Love With Barbara (BBC4), which accepted Barbara Cartland's myths about herself and confused the viewer by jumping backwards and forwards in time. The background music also leapt disconcertingly from Fred Astaire to the Sex Pistols. Sinead Matthews and Anne Reid were both good as the younger and older Barbara respectively, but I couldn't arouse much sympathy for Cartland, a vain, reactionary writer of pulp fiction. As Cartland herself admitted in the play: "You've read one, you've read them all."

In The Book Programme (BBC4) which followed, consisting of Robert Robinson interviewing Barbara Cartland in 1979, she called her novels "fairy stories" and "journalese", and noted that Lord Beaverbrook advised her to keep her paragraphs short, because nobody reads long paragraphs.

Even lower down the scale of drama comes Britannia High (ITV1), ITV's attempt to cash in on the current success of High School Musical and the nostalgic appeal of Fame and Grease. It's about a group of teenagers starting at a stage school, where they will be trained as singers and dancers. The story is as full of clichés as a string vest is full of holes. Naturally there's a nice but naive singer who turns out to be talented; a nasty girl who says spiteful things; and a hunky male called Danny.

Talking of weak dramas, Coronation Street actor Charlie Lawson in The Troubles I've Seen (ITV1) talked of bad TV plays about Northern Ireland written by "trendy knobheads from Watford". English people found it hard to understand 'The Troubles' in Ireland but this programme showed that it was a tribal conflict which arose after the heavy-handed behaviour of the police at a 1968 civil rights march. This alienated the Catholics, who were asking to be treated fairly by the Protestant-dominated government. There was a backlash from the Protestants and soon there were paramilitary groups on both sides committing violent atrocities.

programme was based on the recollections of celebrities (the Radio Times called them "public figures") who grew up surrounded by The Troubles. It seemed strange to hear Protestant actor James Nesbitt talking about "the happiness of marching on the twelfth" (that is, July the 12th, commemorating the 1690 Battle of the Boyne). It was moving to hear Patrick Kielty recalling how paramilitaries shot his father just because he was a Catholic. It was also moving to hear Gloria Hunniford's memories of reporting on a bomb attack and noting "the futility of it all". The 'tit-for-tat' killings of that sad era reinforced the significance of Martin Luther King's saying that "the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind".