I wish my name was Temperance Brennan. Or, in fact, Seely Booth, or Gail Van Deepen, or Violet Sawyer, Fox Mulder, Calleigh Duquesne - I wish that, just like those lucky, lucky people who happen to be fictional and on television, I had a wistful, romantic, "please-bully-me-all-the-way-through-primary-school" name. Or perhaps, if possible, my name could in some way reflect my personality traits, or my career - like a Dr Patience Warmheart, or perhaps Justice Laura Norder.
Fictional people catch all the breaks - it's so unfair. Still, maybe it's not too late, I could always become a forensic scientist, or a medical examiner, or something; they seem to get all the best names. I mention this only because tonight sees the debut of Bones on Sky One - featuring not one but two of the overblown monikers above.
Elsewhere, Liz Hurley begins the designer diva catfight that will be Project Catwalk (as written about in this week's Screen burn), and some famous people carry on being eminently and collectively punchable on Celebrity Big Brother. And, of course, there's much much more - all these picks, for example, plucked readily from this week's Guide.
10 Years Younger; Diet Doctors Inside & Out 8pm, C4; 8pm, Five More new year's resolution TV -- much easier to watch other people chopping themselves fitter than getting up off your sofa and doing it yourself. The 10 Years team take on "deflated balloon" Heather Williams, while the Diet Doctors get to grips with Georgina Hawes, who likes scoffing tinned food while her husband cooks dinner.
Richard Vine
Horizon 9pm, BBC2 An unalloyed treat for those of a "Where's my jetpack?" persuasion (or who felt affronted by Space Cadets), recounting the history of the space industry's 40-year promise of "the ride of a lifetime", and bringing aspiring Aldrins up to date with their real chances of doing the moonwalk. Frontrunner in the race to "do what Nasa never could" is Virgin Galactic, and Richard Branson has invested $100 million with the aim of getting customers into the big black by 2008. Such is the stuff that 21st-century dreams are made of.
Joss Hutton
Animals 10pm, C4 What The War Game and Threads were to nuclear war, so this aims to be a landmark drama-documentary on the thorny subject of animal rights, focusing on those who experiment on animals ("torturers", for some), and animal liberators (deemed "quasi-terrorists"), locked in ugly struggle. As befits such a controversial issue, it's powerful and pretty distressing stuff (genuine lab scenes are featured), and made more uncomfortable by the heavy-handed premise: this fictional drug, pumped into pitiful-looking dogs, might prove to be a major leap forward in the cure for cancer...
Ali Catterall
I Love Being Anorexic 9pm, BBC3 Pro-Anorexics look to militant websites for thinspiration. "Pro-Anas" refuse to see anorexia for what it is: a debilitating disease that kills one in 10 sufferers and, for those that do survive, can lead to a host of medical problems including osteoporosis and infertility. This documentary follows two Pro-Anas as they embark on extreme diets.
Clare Birchall
Bones 10pm, Sky One Starring Emily Deschanel as anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan, that name is the only laugh you're likely to extract from this new, faintly X Files-ish forensic drama. Formulaically edgy, Bones is marred from the outset by an over-applied gloss of MTV-inspired, kick-ass can-do "attitude" and its relentlessly smug, clever-clever dialogue. David "Angel" Boreanz co-stars.
David Stubbs
Mischief: Booze Bird 10.30pm, BBC3 Inspired by Super Size Me, Nicky Taylor sets out to explore why, if Americans are "a bunch of fat bastards", we British are "a nation of piss-heads". Nicky finds out what drinking 516 units of alcohol does to her body. Binge drinking is big business, and while the government officially frowns upon this kind of consumption, the drinks industry knows that 20% of boozers consume 80% of alcohol. In other words, binge drinkers keep the business buoyant. Taylor plays it like an ageing Bridget Jones and gets entertaining but sobering results.
Clare Birchall
Rich Hall's Cattle Drive 11pm, BBC4 Rich Hall's Fishing Show was one of the surprise sitcom finds of recent years, and one that went against the current trend for catchphrase-led comedy. Now he and his slightly desperate sidekick Mike Wilmot, North Americans marooned in London, have decided that they need to rediscover the spirit of the old wild west. So they steal a couple of police horses and traverse the frontiers of London's Westway flyover. This is subtle but sharp comedy.
Will Hodgkinson
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Maybe I should just go ahead and change my name. Something wistful, romantic, fitting to both my personality and job.
That's it. From here on in, I answer to nothing but Grumpmina Webmunkee.
