And I don't just mean star Conor Mullen's voice after he rose from his campsite bed and declaimed, "It's time." (He's the guy you hear on Eircom's answering machine, and on almost every radio-ad voiceover that isn't Simon Delaney. ) No, I mean Wicklow's Powerscourt waterfall roaring away in the background. Where had I seen that setting before on screen? Ah, now I know - the film Excalibur. Appropriate really, because Rough Diamond turned out to be the most incredible fairy tale ever - and I mean incredible in the proper sense of the word.

RT�?'s new drama involves little guys taking on comically clichéd big bad guys, and returning prodigal sons, and wonder horses, but it can probably be summed up - as it was probably pitched, hurriedly and half-arsedly, on the inside of a Toffos wrapper - thus: "One man's voyage of self-discovery, set against the backdrop of the Irish horse-racing world."

It's amazing that nothing like this has been tried before, especially with an international audience in mind. Because, horse-riding and -raring, as well as being practically synonymous overseas with the Irish, is a world that lends itself to tales of heroes and high emotion. But it's being tried now, and with BBC money behind it, you can see Rough Diamond being sold all over the globe.

Certainly, it's as dumb and cheesy as hell - starting with the opening credit sequence, which shows each of the main cast members turning to camera and holding a pose while their first names and surnames whizz on to the screen from opposite directions - which bodes well for it being liked by as wide an audience as possible.

So yes, it's bad. But I can't bring myself to dislike it - it goes out at 7pm on a Friday, for God's sake, so it's not trying to be anything other than stupidly entertaining. I guess it's just refreshing, after Legend and Hide and Seek last year, to find a domestic drama that has absolutely no pretensions. And no matter how awful the things that people write about it now are, I'd be willing to bet money that it'll be fondly remembered in years to come.

Now there's something that's aged well - Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. It wasn't always so kindly thought of, though.

Playboys and Rebels told the story of Playboy's premiere in the Abbey in 1907, which erupted in riots at mention of the word 'shift'. Subsequent nights that week were hijacked by nationalists who objected to the play's backers being the Anglo-Irish WB Yeats and Lady Gregory. Arts minister John O'Donoghue showed up to say that he too would have been tempted to riot, if it meant poking a finger in the eye of Anglo-Ireland - understandable, taken in the context of someone putting himself in a place and time in history. More startling, but not surprising, was the mob we heard, in sound clips from RT�? radio's Liveline, getting into an indignant lather over the recent Abbey play The Empress of India. The moral mullahs don't rip up theatre seats anymore - they just ring up Joe Duffy.

There were shades of Synge about the old Co Galway farms that Coronation Street's Anne Kirkbride visited in a quest to trace her ancestry, in You Don't Know You're Born. This is UTV's answer to the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? - in other words, another programme about celebrities' family trees. I was a fan of the BBC show; each episode was like a mini-version of The Da Vinci Code, with famous people rushing around between documents to unlock the secrets of their past, and pretending to cry for the benefit of the cameras.

This, however, is fatally flawed.

Every so often the real action stops in order to allow the featured celebrity try out some archaic practice their ancestors would have daily engaged in. And the last thing I want to see after a hard day's work is effing Deirdre from Coronation Street plough a field - for bloody 10 minutes, or so it seemed.

Quests don't come more desperate than that on Five Days, a British drama that takes five days in a missing-person investigation and stretches it across five episodes - three last week, two this week. It looks great, there's plenty of intrigue and sub-plots and themes going on - but Christ is it slow-moving. In Wednesday's and Thursday's episodes, the two I caught, the story didn't seem to move forward a lot, it just sort of stewed in its own angst. I think I'll content myself with asking someone next week who it woz wot dunnit rather than see it through to the finish. But who am I anyway - I'm the kind of person who likes Rough Diamond.

Reviewed Rough Diamond Friday, RT�?1 Playboys and Rebels Last night, RT�?2 You Don't Know You're Born Tuesday, UTV Five Days Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, BBC1